Rick Osterloh used to be the president of Motorola when the company was owned by Google, but he departed when Moto was snapped up by Lenovo. Now he’s heading back to Google.
Rick Osterloh is officially joining Google to run a new division that’ll oversee most of all Google’s hardware efforts. Google confirmed the news to Re/code, saying that Osterloh will be a Senior Vice President at Google and will report directly to Google CEO Sundar Pichai.
As for what Osterloh will be in charge of, he’ll oversee Nexus hardware development and work with Android SVP Hiroshi Lockheimer, who will focus on software. Osterloh will also take over Chromecast, consumer hardware like Chromebooks and the Pixel C, the OnHub wireless routers, ATAP and the Project Ara modular phone effort, and Google Glass.
Osterloh was an important part of Motorola, introducing devices like Moto E (2nd Gen) and others. Now he’s going to take over most all of Google’s hardware efforts, which is huge news. It’s also notable that nearly all of Google’s hardware products — the exception being Nest, which will remain on its own — will now be part of one big division under control of Osterloh.
