Skip to footer

Android chief Andy Rubin will step down

Rubin, a co-founder of Android, will be replaced by Chrome chief Sundar Pichai. 

|
Reuters
Sundar Pichai, formerly the senior vice president of Google Chrome, speaks during Google I/O Conference in San Francisco, Calif., in this 2012 file photo. Google has appointed Mr. Pichai as the chief of its Android division, replacing Andy Rubin as the overseer of a platform that in just a few years has become the world's most-used mobile software.
  • By Matthew Shaer

Android co-founder Andy Rubin has decided to "hand over the reins" of the mobile OS to Chrome chief Sundar Pichai, Google announced today. 

Mr. Pichai is currently tasked with Chrome and a range of Chrome OS products at Google; his next job will be to oversee the most-used mobile operating system in the world. Mr. Rubin, meanwhile, will "start a new chapter at Google," Google CEO Larry Page wrote on the company blog. Exactly what Rubin will do next is unclear, although there's some speculation that he could go to the top-secret Google X Lab. 

"Sundar has a talent for creating products that are technically excellent yet easy to use – and he loves a big bet," Mr. Page wrote in the post. "Take Chrome, for example. In 2008, people asked whether the world really needed another browser. Today Chrome has hundreds of millions of happy users and is growing fast thanks to its speed, simplicity and security."

Page added that he expected Pichai to "double down" on Android in coming months. 

So what's behind Rubin's departure? Well, over at Wired, Ryan Tate says that it has a lot to do with a "tightening" of "company focus" – the same thing that may have driven Marissa Mayer to Yahoo. Here's Tate: 

Key to both moves, of course, is Google CEO Larry Page, who has sought to put more wood behind fewer arrows at Google, a company once famous for its willingness to nurture experimental employee passion-projects – as well as for its failure to quickly combat Facebook and the threat social networking posed to Google’s business model. Page famously froze Mayer out of his "L Team" inner circle after he became CEO two years ago and began diverting more resources into the Google+ social networking initiative. It seems to some people at Google that the same is now happening to Rubin. 

Tate goes on to point out that Pichai, Rubin's replacement, is rumored to be tighter with Page than Rubin ever was. 

Android, which was first launched in 2008, has grown in leaps and bounds in recent years. According to Google, a whopping 750 million Android devices have been activated globally; those devices have been used to download more than 25 billion apps from the Google Play store. Those big numbers have a lot to do with the open-source nature of Android: While iOS, Android's biggest competitor, works only on Apple devices, 60 manufacturers around the world use a form of the Android operating system. 

For more tech news, follow us on Twitter @venturenaut.

You've read  of  free articles. Subscribe to continue.
Real news can be honest, hopeful, credible, constructive.
What is the Monitor difference? Tackling the tough headlines – with humanity. Listening to sources – with respect. Seeing the story that others are missing by reporting what so often gets overlooked: the values that connect us. That’s Monitor reporting – news that changes how you see the world.
editor@csmonitor.com
Subscribe
Mark Sappenfield
Editor

Dear Reader,

About a year ago, I happened upon this statement about the Monitor in the Harvard Business Review – under the charming heading of “do things that don’t interest you”:

“Many things that end up” being meaningful, writes social scientist Joseph Grenny, “have come from conference workshops, articles, or online videos that began as a chore and ended with an insight. My work in Kenya, for example, was heavily influenced by a Christian Science Monitor article I had forced myself to read 10 years earlier. Sometimes, we call things ‘boring’ simply because they lie outside the box we are currently in.”

If you were to come up with a punchline to a joke about the Monitor, that would probably be it. We’re seen as being global, fair, insightful, and perhaps a bit too earnest. We’re the bran muffin of journalism.

But you know what? We change lives. And I’m going to argue that we change lives precisely because we force open that too-small box that most human beings think they live in.

The Monitor is a peculiar little publication that’s hard for the world to figure out. We’re run by a church, but we’re not only for church members and we’re not about converting people. We’re known as being fair even as the world becomes as polarized as at any time since the newspaper’s founding in 1908.

We have a mission beyond circulation, we want to bridge divides. We’re about kicking down the door of thought everywhere and saying, “You are bigger and more capable than you realize. And we can prove it.”

If you’re looking for bran muffin journalism, you can subscribe to the Monitor for $15. You’ll get the Monitor Weekly magazine, the Monitor Daily email, and unlimited access to CSMonitor.com.

Subscribe to insightful journalism

QR Code to Android chief Andy Rubin will step down
Read this article in
https://www.csmonitor.com/Technology/2013/0314/Android-chief-Andy-Rubin-will-step-down
QR Code to Subscription page
Start your subscription today
https://www.csmonitor.com/subscribe