Vic Gundotra, the head of Google+ and a senior vice president at Google, is leaving the company. Gundotra made the announcement on Google+ (where else?), providing few details about where he is going or why he is leaving.
Gundotra led the creation of Google+, which has gone through some tough times since its inception. While active users of the service are happy with it, Google+ never reached the ubiquity of Facebook or the traffic-driving abilities of Twitter. Google+'s takeover of YouTube happened late last year, a move that was met with outrage from YouTube's user base, content creators, and even the cofounder of YouTube.
Google's social network has worked to shake the media's "ghost town" label recently by adding view counts to profile pages and pictures. And many now use the service without knowing it, thanks to YouTube, Android photo integration, and the takeover of Google Talk.
Gundotra joined Google in 2007 after leaving Microsoft. His first high-profile job was leading Google's mobile and developer relations team. His presentation abilities usually made him the first man up for emcee honors at Google I/O, where he announced countless Android and Google+ features. According to a report from Re/code, the next man up is VP of Engineering Dave Besbris, who reportedly will head Google+ going forward.
Larry Page chimed in on Vic's Google+ post, saying, Good luck with your next project after Google. In the meantime we’ll continue working hard to build great new experiences for the ever increasing number of Google+ fans."
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