In a surprise move, Google Cloud Chief Operating Officer Diane Bryant has left the company after serving only seven months on the job.

The departure of Bryant (pictured), first reported by Business Insider, was confirmed by Google LLC today. “We can confirm that Diane Bryant is no longer with Google,” the company said in a statement. “We are grateful for the contributions she made while at Google and we wish her the best in her next pursuit.”

It’s not yet clear why the high-profile executive, who had joined Google following a short hiatus for a “family matter” after leaving Intel in May of last year, is now leaving Google. A Business Insider followup story cited one “insider” saying she struggled to find a role at Google, especially since she was considered a genius at infrastructure when Google already had one in employee No. 8, Urs Hölzle, who’s senior vice president of technical infrastructure.

A 32-year veteran of the chipmaking giant, Bryant most recently served as president of Intel Corp.’s Data Center Group, a position she had taken just weeks before leaving the company.

Given that Intel Chief Executive Brian Krzanich left in late June after revelations about a “past consensual relationship” with an Intel employee, there’s immediate speculation that Bryant could return to Intel in the top role. However, it would be unusual for her to leave before such an appointment is announced.

The departure of Bryant, Google Cloud CEO Diane Greene’s top lieutenant, has to be seen as a blow to Google’s efforts to catch up to public cloud computing leaders Amazon Web Services Inc. and Microsoft Corp.’s Azure, both of which continue to grow at a rapid clip. So is Google Cloud, which announced early this year that cloud revenues hit $1 billion a quarter by late 2017, and in April Google CEO Sundar Pichai noted “increasing momentum” in cloud computing thanks to signing more and bigger deals.

Still, despite Google’s recent gains in the market, both its rivals remain far ahead in market share despite Google’s expertise in running its own huge cloud-based operations and developing much of the open-source software that underpins cloud computing.

Bryant was seen as bringing some potent management skills to Google Cloud, with experience and knowledge particularly of the concerns of mainstream information technology executives Google needs to persuade to bet on Google Cloud. Before being appointed president of Intel’s Data Center Group, she had headed the unit since 2012. It brought in $16 billion in sales from processors for servers in data centers and other products in 2016.

Moreover, she has a reputation as a talented speaker who can effectively evangelize new technologies, potentially complementing the soft-spoken Diane Greene, whom Google brought on to jumpstart its cloud operations in late 2015. When Greene welcomed Bryant last November 30, she said that she “can’t think of a person with more relevant experience and talents.”

Google’s cloud unit has also had to deal with strife in its ranks recently, as a number of employees left amid complaints about its work with the Defense Department to analyze military drone footage with its machine learning technologies. Thousands of employees also signed a petition opposing the work. The sentiment led Google to opt not to renew the contract, called Maven, last month.

It’s not clear whether Greene will appoint another COO. But with its outsized ambitions, which will be on full display at its Google Cloud Next conference in San Francisco later this month, the company needs to show it has stable management with the resolve to make the company a force in enterprise computing.

“There is no shortage of executives from the traditional IT vendors who can fill the role,” said Holger Mueller, vice president and principal analyst at Constellation Research Inc. “The question is if Google wants a traditional executive (and their rolodex) or if they bet on the newer, younger generation to evangelize and sell Google Cloud. Due to much of the unique DNA Google has put into its cloud offerings, that should not be too farfetched a possibility.”

Photo: Robert Hof/SiliconANGLE