The UpTake: Vic Gundotra built Google+ from the ground up. His abrupt departure from Google has many wondering what's next for the social network and where Gundotra will take his talents.
G oogle is losing a scrapper in Vic Gundotra, the executive who built Google+.
Gundotra's exit- reported by Re/code-set off speculation that the company's social network is about to get a dramatic overhaul.
Gundotra faced a gargantuan task in building Google+. The company was late to the game in social. In 2011, Google Chairman Eric Schmidt said one of his biggest mistakes during his tenure as CEO was to miss the rise of social identity on the Web.
The service, which launched in June, 2011, still lags well behind Facebook with about 300 million users who actively check their Google+ stream. Facebook has more than one billion active users. Google's aggressive promotion of Google+ under Gundotra, especially forcing YouTube commenters to sign up for accounts, have rubbed many users the wrong way.
Google+ wasn't the only underdog endeavor Gundotra embraced at the company. He was heavily involved in Android as the head of developer relations and turned heads with a fierce, public denunciation of Apple in 2010.
'If Google did not act, we faced a draconian future where one man, one company, one device, one carrier would be our only choice,' he said at Google's I/O developer conference. 'That's not a future we want.'
Gundotra didn't give any indication of what was next in his farewell post on Google+. Whatever it is, it's bound to be interesting.
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