Andy Rubin to step down from Android leadership · Links
13 March 2013 · PPK
Andy Rubin will shortly step down as Android boss and be replaced by Sundar Pichai, who currently heads Google's client software products. Pichai will not lose that function; instead he'll manage Chrome, ChromeOS, and Android all together.
You can see where this is heading, right? More unity among Google's operating systems and browsers.
Still, the big question is what the Android vendors such as Samsung and HTC will do. They could tweak Android WebKit as much as they liked, but if I understand correctly that will be much more difficult with Google Chrome. Thus vendors would lose some differentiation opportunities - and they won't like that.
Or Chrome could be fragmented. That's another option, if the vendors' pressure becomes too much to bear.
In any case, this is a major development for Android. Also, one hopes that the Android team becomes a bit more open. Did I tell you about the time I had an interesting conversation about Android WebKit with the browser engineers? No, I did not, because it never took place.