Google+ Chief Vic Gundotra Departs -- Update

By Rolfe Winkler 

Vic Gundotra, the executive in charge of Google+, announced his departure from Google Inc., the latest sign of upheaval at the company's troubled social network.

Mr. Gundotra in a blog post Thursday said he is leaving Google after eight years at the company, stating "now is the time for a new journey." He will be succeeded by a Google vice president of engineering, David Besbris, the company said.

The departure comes not long after a reorganization of the unit that saw the departure of multiple product managers, according to people familiar with the move.

Google+, which was launched in 2011, has never seriously challenged the lead established by other social networks such as Facebook Inc.

Like Facebook, Google+ provides a stream of content like photos and status updates that its users post for friends. One of its original selling points was a way to create groups of contacts, or "circles," who could share more specific types of information.

The process of logging into Google+ logs users into other services, such as its popular messaging service Gmail and YouTube. Previously, those services had different systems to manage user identities.

"Google+ is nowhere near being a competitor to Facebook," said Danny Sullivan, founding editor of Search Engine Land.

"But it's important that they have managed to build a common identity platform that Google can use across its properties," he said. "Google has always been a collection of [services] and G+ has become this glue that binds them all together."

In a blog post, CEO Larry Page thanked Mr. Gundotra for "a tremendous almost eight years at Google."

A longtime Microsoft Corp. employee before he arrived at Google, Mr. Gundotra was among the executives credited with pushing Mr. Page to devote significant resources in an effort to catch up to Facebook in social networking.

Mr. Gundotra's post didn't explain specific reasons for his departure, or what he intended to do next. His blog indicates he did some personal soul-searching after a relative died in a traffic accident.

"Since then I've thought a lot about how similar this is to our life's endeavors," he wrote. "We pour our heart and soul into our work and it becomes something we love and cherish. But even the challenges we work on today will one day become 'and thens' as we move on to the next."

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