By Rolfe Winkler
Vic Gundotra, the executive in charge of Google+, announced his
departure from Google Inc., the latest sign of upheaval at the
company's troubled social network.
Mr. Gundotra in a blog post on Thursday said he was leaving
Google after eight years at the company, stating "now is the time
for a new journey." He will be succeeded by a Google vice president
of engineering, David Besbris, the company said.
The departure comes shortly after a reorganization of the unit
that included the departures of several product managers, according
to people familiar with the move.
Google+, which was launched in 2011, has never seriously
challenged the lead established by other social networks such as
Facebook Inc.
Like Facebook, Google+ provides a stream of content such as
photos and status updates that its users post for their friends.
Its original selling points include a way to create groups of
contacts, or "circles," to share more specific types of
information. Another is Hangouts, a popular messaging tool that
enables group video chat.
Google+ also was a key part of a new system the company created
to help users sign into various services, like Gmail and YouTube,
using a single login and password. Previously, those services had
different systems to manage user identities.
Just how popular Google+ is remains a matter of debate. Mr.
Gundotra said last October that the site had 540 million monthly
active users.
But some current and former Google employees say that figure
distorts usage of the core social-network elements of the site. The
company has acknowledged that its definition of active users
includes people who clicked a red notification icon in their Gmail
inbox, for instance.
Counting only people who read posts, Google+ had around seven
million daily active users two years ago, a person familiar with
the figure said. Facebook reported in its most recent quarter 802
million daily active users.
Other events have raised questions about Google's commitment to
the service.
In recent weeks, employees of the unit have moved from one
building in the middle of the company's campus in Mountain View,
Calif.--where it is easy for Chief Executive Larry Page and other
top executives to keep tabs on the operation's progress--to another
building farther away, people familiar with the matter say.
Proximity to Mr. Page's office is regarded as a sign of a
project's status at the company, one former senior Google executive
said, though others note that employee moves are common because of
Google's rapid growth.
The choice of Mr. Besbris, a top engineer at Google+ rather than
a person known as a product visionary, was also noted by some
people close to the company as a sign of an uncertain future.
A Google spokeswoman insisted Google+ is growing and remains
important to the company.
"Today's announcement has no impact on our Google+ strategy--we
have an incredibly talented team that will continue to build great
user experiences across Google+, Hangouts and Photos," she
said.
Externally, the connections between Google+ and other Google
services have sometimes proven unpopular. Some YouTube users, for
example, complained late last year when the video-streaming service
began requiring them to have a Google+ account to leave comments
next to video clips.
"You've ruined our site and called it integration," sang one
user on a YouTube video.
People who follow the company say the unified login has brought
benefits to the company.
"Google+ is nowhere near being a competitor to Facebook," said
Danny Sullivan, founding editor of Search Engine Land. "But it is
important that they have managed to build a common identity
platform that Google can use across its properties," he said.
"Google has always been a collection of [services] and G+ has
become this glue that binds them all together."
Mr. Gundotra was a member of Mr. Page's so-called "L team," a
general staff of top executives that includes Sundar Pichai, who
runs the Android and Chrome operating systems among other areas and
Sridhar Ramaswamy, who is head of ads and commerce.
A longtime employee at Microsoft Corp. before arriving at
Google, Mr. Gundotra is described by some former colleagues as a
polarizing figure whose style didn't fit in well at Google. But he
is credited with helping to push Mr. Page to devote significant
resources in an effort to catch up to Facebook in social
networking.
One key motivation has to do with gathering information. While
Facebook knows facts about users such as their names, ages and
genders, Google was largely guessing about its users based on clues
like their Web-browsing habits. Such extra information is important
when you consider that the two companies are competing for the
attention of advertising executives, who look to target ad
campaigns to more specific slices of the population.
In a blog post, Mr. Page thanked Mr. Gundotra for "a tremendous
almost eight years at Google" and wished him luck on his future
activities. "In the meantime we'll continue working hard to build
great new experiences for the ever increasing number of Google+
fans," Mr. Page wrote.
Mr. Gundotra couldn't be reached for comment. His blog post
didn't explain specific reasons for his departure, or what he
intended to do next. His blog indicates he engaged in personal
soul-searching after a relative died in a traffic accident.
"Since then I've thought a lot about how similar this is to our
life's endeavors," he wrote. "We pour our heart and soul into our
work and it becomes something we love and cherish. But even the
challenges we work on today will one day become 'and thens' as we
move on to the next."
Evelyn M. Rusli contributed to this article.
Write to Rolfe Winkler at rolfe.winkler@wsj.com
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