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Comment by beaner | Hacker News Reader

IMO Sundar has executed brilliantly at the things he's been tasked with so far, so I'm excited to see him take on more responsibility.

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They should have given him Maps too.

I've recently been using Nokia HERE Maps for Android and I am liking it a lot more than Google Maps (which on Android has been pretty crappy since the 6.x->7.x transition, IMO, and is forever crippled due to Google's continued pretending that people's cellphones always have a usable network connection). I've been enjoying using HERE Maps to the point where it has me considering getting a Windows phone as my Nexus 5 replacement because Maps was the killer Android app for me before they messed it up.

I've noticed Google Maps has been getting really bad recently too. It seems every quarter I notice features I used disappearing, it taking more clicks to do anything, and basic functionality like loading the search points on the map barely working (since they moved to these new card search results and you have to scramble to get the map you want).

There are some good replacements out there, at least, like City Mapper.

Chrome browser, Gmail yes. Chrome OS, Google Apps, Android since 2013... I must be missing something.

> Android

From all indications 5.0 is a terrific release.

I'm not suggesting Android has dropped in quality or momentum at all under Pichai. I'm just noting the lack of the opposite. As an outsider how can we judge Andy Rubin a failure and Pichai a brilliant success when the former exceeded all of Gooogles goals with Android and the latter by all appearances is just staying the course?

Where was Andy Rubin judged a failure?

How else do you interpret 'Andy you're not the head of Android anymore, we're giving your job to Sundar.'?

"I've been in charge of Android for 9.5 years and now I want to go work on robots"?

Knowing that Google A/B tests everything I'd have to guess 'going to work on robots' soundly outperforms 'public cuckolding by Sergei' as a way to force out execs.

That's...not even clever?

What a weird response, but I now realize that I wandered into a thread where you were just looking for some tabloid headlines. Carry on!

Sergei's girlfriend's ex is Hugo Barra, not Andy Rubin.

http://www.smh.com.au/digital-life/digital-life-news/sergey-...

That was not what happened. Andy Rubin worked on Android since 2003. It's not that unusual to want to work on something else after a decade.

Buying Moto burned a lot of karma. Blowing that kind of money hurts, even when you're Google.

I thot the CW was Google broke even by selling the pieces and getting the IP and a bunch of tax write offs.

   ignoring the time value of money
     $12.5B   purchase
   -   3B     cash on hand
   -   1B     tax credits
   -   2.4B   sale of desktop boxes to Arris
   -   2.91B  sale to lenovo
   ==========
       3.19B

and google kept patents, etc. Plus there are potentially -- reporting varies -- up to another $.7B/year they kept it of tax offsets I didn't mention, so subtract another $1.4B [1]

[1] http://www.forbes.com/sites/timworstall/2012/12/22/did-motor...

It wasn't so much the net ~$3B (piffle!) but approximately doubling headcount with the sort of people who got Moto to where it was before they were bought, and having to manage all that in a direction where a sale for $0.25 on the dollar is considered a success ($0.55 if you count the divested bits). It isn't quite as irrational as buying Nokia, but it's right up there. Moto was a big giant messy falling knife.

I don't think Rubin was forced out because he was judged a failure. There's just no proof of that.

Android had succeeded and under Rubin the team was doing great - except that there was a lack of tighter integration between Google's other properties and Android - Chrome for instance took too long to get on Android and become good. Same with other apps. As is evident now from how much progress Hangouts, Chrome amd ChromeOS have made under Sundar - he was well poised to lead a team that would have all these under one umbrella and Rubin apparently had other interests. So it worked out well for everyone.

Some people are more interested in building new things than running a huge division. Everything indicated Rubin is brilliant and building new things - maybe he prefers it, too?

Andy Rubin is a founder, entrepreneur, techie. He grew Android to amazing level. He found another passion in AI and moved on.

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