Larry Page credits Gundotra for ‘building Google+ from nothing.’
By Deepak Chitnis
WASHINGTON, DC: Vic Gundotra, the man credited as the mastermind behind Google+, has announced that he will be leaving the company for undisclosed reasons.
Gundotra made the announcement via a posting on his own Google+ page, in which he stated that he is proud of his eight year tenure with the online search giant, but feels that now it’s time to look ahead. Gundotra remained vague at to what exactly he will be doing after his departure, but hinted that something is certainly in the pipeline.
“I am excited about what’s next. But this isn’t the day to talk about that. This is a day to celebrate the past 8 years,” wrote Gundotra. “I’m also forever in debt to the Google+ team. This is a group of people who built social at Google against the skepticism of so many.”
Google+ was launched in 2011 as Google’s first foray into the expanding sector of social media, and was meant to compete head-on with leaders Facebook and Twitter. As of last year, Google+ had 540 million active users, putting it ahead of Twitter’s user base around the time but only about half of the over 1.2 billion active Facebook users around the world.
Google CEO Larry Page thanked Gundotra for his years of service, lauding him for “[building] Google+ from nothing” and saying “here are few people with the courage and ability to start something like that and I am very grateful for all your hard work and passion.” Page also wished Gundotra good luck on his future ventures, indicating that this was a voluntary resignation on Gundotra’s part and not a result of any internal animosity within Google.
A native of Mumbai, Gundotra is an alumnus of the Indian Institute of Technology (IIT) Madras. He was formerly with another IT titan, Microsoft, which he joined in 1991. Gundotra eventually worked his way up to the position of General Manager of Platform Evangelism, in which he was responsible for developing and promoting Microsoft technologies across multiple platforms.
Gundotra joined Google in 2007, and eventually became the company’s Senior Vice-President of Social. In addition to his spearheading of the Google+ movement, he was also responsible for the removal of several popular features from Google Reader, an RSS/Atom feed aggregator that Google eventually shut down last year due to declining usage. He also helped promote Google technology on mobile devices.
Gundotra’s resignation is effective immediately. He will be replaced by David Besbris, Google’s Vice-President of Engineering, who Gundotra himself has chosen to succeed him. The move is somewhat unusual, as Google+ Product Head Bradley Horowitz was considered a shoo-in for the top Google+ position should the situation ever arise.