“Hugo Barra, whose official title is vice president of product management for Android, has been one of the more public faces of the mobile operating system, appearing frequently at Google press events and at its annual I/O developer conference. It was Barra, for example, who showed off the Nexus 7 tablet at its recent launch in San Francisco,” Ina Fried and John Paczkowski report for AllThingsD. “Barra, sources said, is leaving for a job at Xiaomi, a fast-growing Chinese phone maker. Xiaomi, which builds Android phones for the Chinese market, prides itself not only on its high-end hardware, but also on the software it adds on top of Google’s operating system.”
“Sources close to the situation told AllThingsD that Barra recently tendered his resignation, but that it came before a recent thorny personal situation related to the end of a romantic relationship he had with another Googler,” Fried and Paczkowski report. “That Googler is now seeing the company’s co-founder Sergey Brin, but sources said his decision to leave the company is unrelated and was made before he was aware of the new relationship. As AllThingsD reported earlier today, Brin has split with his wife, and is in involved with another Google employee, a difficult and fraught situation.”
MacDailyNews Take: Soap opera. Go try to pick up an NHL team, too, while you’re at it, Sergey.
Fried and Paczkowski report, “Barra’s exit from Google is a significant one for the company and its Android division. Earlier this year, Andy Rubin, creator of Android, abruptly stepped down from that team, ostensibly to ‘start a new chapter at Google.’ Coming as it does so quickly in the aftermath of Rubin’s pivot, Barra’s exit could cause ripples in one of Google’s most important divisions, the front line of its battle for mobile.”
MacDailyNews Take: At which it makes no profit, only losses, as it has stupidly put itself into the position of laboring as a free operating system developer for companies ranging from Amazon to ZTE.
Fried and Paczkowski report, “Barra’s departure, along with Rubin’s shift, raises questions about just where Google will take Android in the coming years, and who will guide that effort.”
Read more in the full article here.
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Google co-founder Sergey Brin splits with wife Anne Wojcicki amidst romantic relationship with another Google employee – August 29, 2013