Andy Rubin, the head of Android at Google - officially, senior vice president of mobile and digital content - is stepping down to be replaced by Sundar Pichai, who currently runs the company's Chrome web browser and Apps division.
Rubin co-founded Android in October 2003, while Google acquired the company in August 2005. It retained the key employees, including Rubin, while the market assumed that Google's aim was to launch into the mobile market.
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Google CEO Larry Page revealed the changes in his blog.
"Sergey [Brin] and I first heard about Android back in 2004, when Andy Rubin came to visit us at Google. He believed that aligning standards around an open-source operating system would drive innovation across the mobile industry," wrote Page.
He continued: "His insight immediately struck a chord because at the time it was extremely painful developing services for mobile devices. We had a closet full of more than 100 phones and were building our software pretty much device by device. It was nearly impossible for us to make truly great mobile experiences."
The open source approach, which brought on board Samsung, HTC, LG and other major mobile phone manufacturers enabled Android to become a broadly supported standard across the industry.
The growth of Android is reflected in the latest figures, which show that it enjoys a two-thirds market share in terms of unit sales in the fast-growing smartphone segment, well ahead of Apple's iOS. This is not least due to the wide range of devices on offer, as well as their low starting prices.
Figures from analyst group Gartner suggest that Android unit sales will increase from 221.6 million in 2011 to more than 750 million in 2013 - well ahead of second-place iOS at 160 million. It will claim just under 40 per cent of the total mobile phone market, according to Gartner.
The proprietary platforms offered by Nokia and Microsoft, in contrast, have declined markedly in terms of market share, continuing to decline even after Nokia ditched its Symbian operating system in favour of Windows Phone.
The "musical chairs" at Google, according to some reports, reflects a tightening of control at the top of the company, and a desire to consolidate related ventures under fewer heads.
Pichai, for example, heads up the division developing the Chrome OS, which like Android is also based on the Linux open source operating system. Bringing both together under the one head will enable them to be developed together more closely.
Indeed, it is rumoured that Pichai and Rubin have repeatedly clashed over the direction of their respective operating systems. Page has, in recent years, moved to shut down more and more overlapping initiatives, as well as closing ventures that are either not profitable, or are insufficiently profitable.
The latest service to go is Google Reader, its RSS aggregator, which will be closed on 1 July.
