UPDATED 06:55 EDT / APRIL 29 2016

NEWS

Rick Osterloh takes charge of Google’s new hardware division

Google has hired a new executive in the shape of Rick Osterloh to lead its hardware efforts. Osterloh, who was formerly president of Motorola Inc., will head up a new hardware division at Google that encompasses its Nexus smartphones, consumer hardware (which includes Chromebooks and the new Pixel C device for Android phones), Chromecast, Google Glass and more.

Osterloh is a familiar name at Google because he’s actually worked there before. He joined the company when it acquired Motorola back in 2011, hanging around until Motorola was resold to China’s Lenovo Group Ltd. in 2014. He stayed on at Lenovo until just last month, when he left the firm after Lenovo announced a reorganization of its leadership. Now, he’s rejoined Google as a senior vice president in charge of the hardware group, which puts him on an equal footing with the executives in charge of Android, Advertising, Search and YouTube, Re/Code reported.

The report says Google’s new Hardware Division will absorb almost all of the company’s hardware projects. This includes the successful stuff like its Chromebooks, Chromecasts and Nexus phones, as well as the not-so-successful stuff like ATAP (the Advanced Technology and Projects group), OnHub and Google Glass.

ATAP is probably the least well known part of Google’s new hardware unit. It’s yet to ship a single piece of hardware, and recently lost its leader Regina Dugan to Facebook. OnHub meanwhile, is a router that supports hundreds of devices at a time, which Google says will someday become fixture of the smart home device world, though that’s yet to happen. It was born in Alphabet’s “Access” division, which also houses Google Fiber. OnHub has just been updated, becoming the first router to support IFTTT, which lets users set up triggers when certain devices connect to the OnHub network. Whether or not those updates help Google to sell more OnHubs remains to be seen.

As for Google Glass, it’s very well known as one of Google’s more spectacular failures. Everyone was raving about the device at one time and it looked a sure thing that Google would eventually start selling a consumer model – then, to everyone’s surprise, Google did an about turn and dumped the consumer version. Since then Glass has largely been forgotten about, though there has been talk of a more specialized ‘enterprise edition’ of the specs is in the works.

Osterloh will presumably be tasked with fixing (or perhaps killing off) those products that haven’t been doing so well, while ensuring that the better ones (Nexus, Chromebooks etc) continue to go from strength to strength.

These broad changes signal a major shift in Google’s commitment to hardware. As Re/Code notes, the move will help unify Google’s hardware efforts and hopefully put an end to internal competition between different parts of company.

Photo Credit: ben_nuttall via Compfight cc

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