A senior Android software engineer is leaving the Android team, hot on the heels of senior project manager Erik Tseng’s announcement that he’s going to Facebook. Cedric Buest is headed to Linked In after some six years at Google. On his personal blog, he wrote:
I’ve been at Google for six years but it feels more like “Two years at Google and four years in a small start up called Android that plans to revolutionize the mobile industry”. I don’t know what’s the most surprising: how ambitious that goal was four years ago or how far Android has come today.
It’s hard to believe that Android shipped its first device about a year and a half ago and at that time, Apple had already sold more than ten million iPhones. Who would have guessed that it would only take Android eighteen months to catch up and pass the iPhone in market share?
In this short period of time, we’ve gone through four major releases (and many, many minor ones, some of which you probably never even heard of), and each new version has been a major milestone that got everyone on the team incredibly excited.
Before anybody gets all up in arms over a couple of big names leaving, we’ll say that Android is way bigger than one person. Or even two. It’s me. It’s you. It’s all of us singing and dancing around a big oak tree. Oh, and it’s a giant robot out to crush the soulless iPhones. And speaking of which, Buest takes a minute to trumpet Froyo, saying “prepare to be blown away by what you will see very soon.”
Indeed, we’re prepared. Namaste, Cedric. [via Tech Crunch]