Google's Hugo Barra brandishes the new Nexus 7 at an event on July 24, 2013 in San Francisco
If you’ve seen one of Google’s recent Android press conferences, you’ve seen plenty of Hugo Barra on stage. The former VP of Android product management for Google, Barra is leaving to work for Chinese phone maker Xiaomi, according to a post on his Google+ page.
The post reads, in part:
In a few weeks, I’ll be joining the Xiaomi team in China to help them expand their incredible product portfolio and business globally — as Vice President, Xiaomi Global. I’m really looking forward to this new challenge, and am particularly excited about the opportunity to continue to help drive the Android ecosystem.
AllThingsD reports that Barra’s departure “came before a recent thorny personal situation related to the end of a romantic relationship he had with another Googler,” alluding to a previous story the site had broken about Google co-founder Sergey Brin’s split from his wife. Apparently the Google employee Barra was seeing is now seeing Brin, though AllThingsD’s sources say Barra’s decision to leave “is unrelated and was made before he was aware of the new relationship.”
Barra makes the second high-profile loss for the Android team this year; in March, the unofficial “father” of Android, Andy Rubin, stepped down from his post to work on unnamed special projects inside Google.