14 DAY TRIAL // It looks like Google is not done with the reorganization. First came the rather surprising announcement that Android head Andy Rubin was leaving his role for some other project at Google, with Chrome Chief Sundar Pichai taking over.
Now, the Wall Street Journal says that Google is splitting up the Maps and Commerce division, with Maps joining search and Commerce joining the advertising unit.
This leaves Jeff Huber, who was in charge of both, without a job. He too is said to be joining Google X, where Rubin also seems to be headed.
If this was only about Rubin, maybe the narrative that he was tired of running a now very successful product and was looking for a challenge may have made sense.
But this is starting to look a lot more like a reorganization, following the one that saw the establishment of these units inside Google in the first place, shortly after Larry Page took over as CEO.
Now, he seems to be making some tweaks to the formula, unifying Android with Chrome and Apps while also dissolving the Maps and Commerce unit and merging the two parts into existing divisions.
This may make sense for Google internally, but it meant that two senior execs were left without units to run.
While with Huber it may have been an easy decision, with the Chrome and Android spilt, it's clear that this was between Rubin and Pichai. Maybe Rubin did actually choose to step aside, maybe he didn't have a choice.
While Page is still to prove himself, Google is going from strength to strength, it's making more money than ever and its core products are doing better than ever.
It's also gaining some design chops and expanding into new areas, such as hardware. This while the Google X Labs has kept the company in the spotlight for the past couple of years.