Update from Google CEO Larry Page About Android

Google CEO Larry Page blogged today to announce that Sundar Pichai has been picked to lead Google’s Android team.

Up until now Andy Rubin, the guy who created the Android OS, has been in charge of Android. In an email to his team, Rubin wrote:

“I am an entrepreneur at heart and now is the right time for me to start a new chapter within Google. I am amazed by what we have accomplished from those early days (not so long ago!), and remain passionate about the power of a simple idea and a shared goal — an open source platform freely available to everyone — to transform computing for people everywhere.”

Neither Larry Page or Andy Rubin gave any indication about Rubin’s new roll at the search leader, but Page explain Rubin’s initial Android pitch to Google 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.

Sundar Pichai has been in charge of Chrome and he will continue to be.

Bringing Chrome and Android under the leadership of Pichai suggest Google plans to more tightly integrate Chrome OS and Android moving forward. Page wrote that Pichai, “has a talent for creating products that are technically excellent yet easy to use,” and offered the Chrome browser as an example.

According to Page, Android is the most used mobile operating system in the world. Google has partnerships with over 60 manufactures, 750 million devices have been activated around the world, and 25 billion apps have been downloaded from Google Play.

Moving forward, Google wants to “really improve” our lives by building technology that “takes care of the hard work” so we can focus on living and loving.