Vic Gundotra, The IITian Who Built Google+ Says Good Bye to It, The Google+ Story Till Date

Vic Gundotra, IITian and Indian executive who headed the Google+ team at Google bid his farewell with the company. Looks like Google just lost one of its dynamic and visionary executive. Gundotra is an proud alumnus of Indian Institute of Technology, Madras. Prior to joining Google he worked with Microsoft, handing the developers relations for the company. Gundotra joined Google in 2007 and along with Sundar Pichai, head of Android and Chrome division.Vic Gundotra has been leading Google+ since its birth that debuted nearly three years ago.Gundotra had been in charge of Google Plus as the Mountain View, California, company’s senior vice-president of social. Vic Gundotra fittingly announced his departure in a Thursday post on Google+ .

Today I’m announcing my departure from Google after almost 8 years. I have been incredibly fortunate to work with the amazing people of Google. I don’t believe there is a more talented and passionate collection of people anywhere else. And I’m overwhelmed when I think about the leadership of +Larry Page and what he empowered me to do while at Google. From starting Google I/O, to being responsible for all mobile applications, to creating Google+, none of this would have happened without Larry’s encouragement and support.Posted Gundotra. 

Although Gundotra didn’t explain his reasons for leaving nor did he reveal what he is planning to do next.

But, now is the time for a new journey. A continuation. An “and then”. I am excited about what’s next. But this isn’t the day to talk about that. This is a day to celebrate the past 8 years. To cry. And smile. And to look forward to the journey yet to come.

Interestingly on the other hand Google Inc. CEO Larry Page praised Gundotra for building Google Plus from scratch in his post.

Vic — thank you for a tremendous almost eight years at Google.  You cut your teeth on our mobile apps and developer relations, turning our disparate efforts into something great.  When I first used turn-by-turn navigation, it blew me away.  And, walking onto the stage at I/O last year, it was amazing to see developers so excited about Google.  These were vintage Vic projects.  Then you built Google+ from nothing.  There are few people with the courage and ability to start something like that and I am very grateful for all your hard work and passion.  I really enjoy using Google+ on a daily basis, especially the auto awesome movies which I really love sharing with my family and friends.  Good luck with your next project after Google.  In the meantime we’ll continue working hard to build great new experiences for the ever increasing number of Google+ fans.

Google confirmed that the leadership of Google+ will be taken over by VP of Engineering Dave Besbris. Horowitz joined Google in 2008 after leading Yahoo’s big acquisitions of Delicious and Flickr, and had also worked closely with Gundotra in the journey of building Google+. 

Although Google+ is said to have more than 500 million users, it’s a known fact that Google+ is still having a tough time to make people use its service and increase user engagement and give a tough competition to the social media giant Facebook.

Google+ succeeded and failed at the same time. It’s not a complete failure. Before analyzing the areas in which Google+ succeeded and failed let’s see why did Google actually plan to build Google+. The answer is pretty simple :

• To pioneer social networking and give a tough competition to other social media giants.
• To be a channel connecting users across a bunch of Google products.
• Of course, to generate more ad revenue.

Google failed to achieve the first goal but indeed achieve the remaining goals. Google+ failed as a social network. The problem for them was not to build the user base but to build an active user base. People don’t tend to use Google+ for the same amount of time they use Facebook.

Google+ successfully accomplished the second goal by creating a seaming less interface between various google products like Gmail, Youtube,D rive through Google+ log in.

Well, the third point is goal is quite obvious.Given the fact that Google has wide range of products like Gmail,Google wallet,Google Maps,Nest,Youtube and chrome browser Google+ can easily build much more targeted advertisement channels that Facebook can’t even imagine right now.

We are quite excited about how the trajectory of Google+ is going to look like from now. Is it towards failure or success? Well, that’s again debatable. We would like to hear your views on the same.