Former Motorola Chief Rick Osterloh to Head Google’s New Unified Hardware Team: Report

Rick Osterloh, former President of Motorola Mobility, left Lenovo last month and is now said to have rejoined Motorola’s previous owner – Google. The report says that Osterloh has joined Google as Senior Vice President and will report to CEO Sundar Pichai. Unfortunately, there has been no formal announcement regarding the appointment.

Re/code reports that Rick Osterloh will head a newly formed hardware division at Google, with the aim to “unify” the company’s current disparate product lineup. The new Google division will reportedly include the Nexus, which means Osterloh will take charge of hardware development of Google’s flagship Android devices, and work closely with Android SVP Hiroshi Lockheimer on the products. The report claims that after the inclusion of Osterloh, Lockheimer will take care of software and platform development.

Other divisions under the new hardware product line include Chromecast, Consumer hardware (including Chromebook laptops and the Pixel C tablet), OnHub (the company’s wireless home router division, and ATAP (Advanced Technologies and Projects, which includes the Project Ara team), and Glass. The report says that Tony Fadell, who’s the CEO of Nest, will be an “adviser” to the team.

To recall, Osterloh initially joined Motorola as Corporate Vice President of the company in 2007. He left Motorola in 2010 to join Skype as its Vice President. However, he left Skype (which had been acquired by Microsoft by then) in 2012 to join Motorola again as its Vice President. He became the President of Motorola Mobility, then a Google company, in 2014. Osterloh soon after the exit of head of MotorolaDennis Woodside in 2014 had to take charge as President rather than just looking after the software and operation of the Android platform at Motorola.