Hacker News Reader

A bit too cynical, I think. This kind of arrangement, where one of the cofounders steps down to let someone else run the company, is very very common. Especially when the person stepping down is more technical/scientific. Remember that Thrun used to be a professor and used to do/lead research at Google.

Yeah running a business is a complete different story.

I disagree, I'd say it means there's too much day to day running of the org that their key people aren't able to focus on the longer term. That's pretty common.

Except that Thrun has a pretty good track record so far.