According to the popular joke on the interwebs, Google+ has always felt like the ignored child at the nursery school among the kids of the rich and wealthy. In this battle of finding its identity, it was the father of G+ who stood by him and made sure his pale, shy kid got recognized. Sadly now, the father is leaving the family. In what was a surprising turn of events, Vic Gundotra, the man behind the advent of Google+ and a Senior Vice President of Google has decided to part ways from a company that he served for the past eight years. One of the most prolific and outspoken figures, Vic’s absence at the Google I/O this year will be a gaping hole to fill, especially as he worked very closely with the developers, heading mobile and developer relations programme, during his early days at Google. With Vic and Huge Barra, now at Xiaomi, both gone from Google, the I/O 2014 certainly will be a strange place to be. Vic Gundotra took to his personal G+ page to announce his intentions to move on and pursue the next big ‘And Then’. Google+ certainly failed to live up to its billing of being the Facebook killer. Although the social network has been widely recognized for some of its features including the auto photo backups, concept of circles as well as enhancing the images into interesting Auto Movies, it has largely been left wanting in the industry dominated by Twitter and Facebook. Gundotra had been with Google since 2007, moving from Microsoft after serving for 15 years there. It would certainly be interesting to find out what he is up to next, though obviously he did not reveal the plans of the same.
After 8 years of Service which included Heading Google+, Vic Gundotra Leaves Google
While succeeding Vic would not be an easy task, given the enormity of his stature in the tech world, the responsibility will be taken over by the current VP of Engineering Dave Besbris, who reportedly will head Google+ going forward.