According to a report in the Wall Street Journal, Google is breaking apart its mapping and commerce divisions, both of which were headed by executive Jeff Huber. Sources told the Wall Street Journal that Huber will move to the Google X unit and will work with Sergey Brin on projects like Google Glass. A Google spokesperson provided the following statement about the shakeup:
“Jeff is an extraordinary executive. He just finished his first decade at Google—having worked on some of our most complicated issues like ads, apps, payments and geo—and now he is eager to work in more of a startup-like environment.”
Mapping will move over to the search team, which is led by Alan Eustace, and the commerce group will fall under the control of Susan Wojcicki’s advertising group.
These changes were part of a bigger transition that saw Andy Rubin leave the Android group and Sundar Pichai from the Chrome group take his place. Google also announced yesterday that it was killing several services including Google Reader.
[Via The Wall Street Journal]