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Sundar Pichai (Chrome) replaces Andy Rubin as Android lead

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ThatObviousUser

ὁ αἴσχιστος παῖς εἶ
Update from the CEO

Sergey and I first heard about Android back in 2004, when Andy Rubin came to visit us at Google. He believed that aligning standards around an open-source operating system would drive innovation across the mobile industry. Most people thought he was nuts. But his insight immediately struck a chord because at the time it was extremely painful developing services for mobile devices. We had a closet full of more than 100 phones and were building our software pretty much device by device. It was nearly impossible for us to make truly great mobile experiences.

Fast forward to today. The pace of innovation has never been greater, and Android is the most used mobile operating system in the world: we have a global partnership of over 60 manufacturers; more than 750 million devices have been activated globally; and 25 billion apps have now been downloaded from Google Play. Pretty extraordinary progress for a decade’s work. Having exceeded even the crazy ambitious goals we dreamed of for Android—and with a really strong leadership team in place—Andy’s decided it’s time to hand over the reins and start a new chapter at Google. Andy, more moonshots please!

Going forward, Sundar Pichai will lead Android, in addition to his existing work with Chrome and Apps. Sundar has a talent for creating products that are technically excellent yet easy to use—and he loves a big bet. 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. So while Andy’s a really hard act to follow, I know Sundar will do a tremendous job doubling down on Android as we work to push the ecosystem forward.

Today we’re living in a new computing environment. People are really excited about technology and spending a lot of money on devices. This is driving faster adoption than we have ever seen before. The Nexus program—developed in conjunction with our partners Asus, HTC, LG and Samsung—has become a beacon of innovation for the industry, and services such as Google Now have the potential to really improve your life. We’re getting closer to a world where technology takes care of the hard work—discovery, organization, communication—so that you can get on with what makes you happiest… living and loving. It’s an exciting time to be at Google.

Posted by Larry Page, CEO
 
Well Duarte is the mastermind right? We'll be fine. I wonder what secret stuff Rubin is going to work on.
 
I wonder what this means.

Everything's been hinting towards Android and Chrome merging recently hasn't it.
 
Seeing as how Chrome has turned to absolute shit since v22 hit and there's been barely any hope of seeing some long-standing bugs fixed yet, this move does not fill me with confidence whatsoever.
 
Seeing as how Chrome has turned to absolute shit since v22 hit and there's been barely any hope of seeing some long-standing bugs fixed yet, this move does not fill me with confidence whatsoever.

This is how I feel. Still love Chrome, but it has been a bit unstable (at least on my two year old laptop).

But I wonder, does this mean a true Chrome OS and Android merge?
 
I don't care for Sundar because I also care little about chrome os. As an engineer, I'm sure he's great. But I hope this doesn't change the direction of their mobile initiative.
 
He's the director of Android UX, so yeah, for the stuff we care about, I doubt much will change.
He's the director of terrible shirts.
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I'll make sure to grave stomp chromeos on g+ then.


Maybe Sundar can get some semblance of an update system implemented for android.
 
Killing chrome os at I/O would please me greatly. Make a better chrome for android and ship that in your laptops instead of that gimped os.
 
In the Sundar Shyamalan Twist...

He announces the death of Android and that Chrome OS will lead the way even on mobile with all apps being made for Chrome OS. Then Andrex rulez Tech-GAF happily ever after!
 
Larry Page said:
I know Sundar will do a tremendous job doubling down on Android as we work to push the ecosystem forward.

Bad choice of words there. When has a company saying that they are "doubling down" ever been a good thing?
 
Yeah, forget what I said, article is trash haha. I expect more from you, Verge.
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Too bad Android is still a pain to develop for. :(

If you ignore everything pre-4.0 (which you can mostly do now, as people with old and crappy phones are pretty unlikely to use much of anything anyway) it really isn't. Although I guess that depends on what you want to do.
 
As someone who has done a lot with .net and who works in the same cube as iOS developers, the java / android UI chain makes me hate life.

As a web developer I feel the pain even more so. :(

Static this, static that... kills me inside. Argh.

Making screens isn't as absolutely torturous as it was in the 1.0-2.3 days because of the better GUI builder, but man, do I miss CSS.
 
Maybeh.



I blame that on Java. The ADT plugin and dev tools are fantastic.

But Java and XML...
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Next month I am going to start teaching myself application development, and Android is my platform of choice (mostly because it would be easiest to test for) but I really don't like java, even though I am 'comfortable' with it. I think I am just going to skip right over to a mono-based tool (like Xamarin) and c# the bitch up. Added bonus of being easily portable to many different platforms.

If only developing on all the platforms could be language agnostic and require next to no re-working...
 
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