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Rick Osterloh of Motorola scooped up by Google to lead a new hardware division
Google wanted Rick Osterloh back, and they got him. The former president of Motorola has re-joined the Google team after leaving the Lenovo-owned smartphone maker back in March. Osterloh will be serving as a Senior Vice President and will report directly to CEO Sundar Pichai. Osterloh has a very solid reputation in the industry, so his return to Google is good news to many. His role will be to head up a new division that will serve as an umbrella to house all of the company’s hardware projects.
What exactly does his new role entail? Osterloh will be overseeing a variety of projects including the future of Nexus. Chromecast, Google’s wildly popular video and music streaming stick, will also fall under his wheelhouse, as will Chromebook laptops and the Pixel C tablet. He will also be looking over ATAP, the experimental hardware lab that recently lost its leader Regina Dugan to Facebook. He’ll also be overseeing Glass, which has been quietly working on the followup to their famous false-start augmented reality headset.
Osterloh became president of Motorola Mobility back in 2014. He was with the company when it was owned by Google, and remained with it through its acquisition by Lenovo. This move is a return to Google for the former Motorola leader, but it will see him in a position of far greater responsibility and authority. We look forward to seeing what he does with the search giant’s wide array of hardware products.
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