Noble calls time on Google Australia stint
After 11 years as Google Australia's director of engineering, Alan Noble is stepping down to focus on his non-profit AusOcean project.
Noble arrived at Google in 2007, with the company stating his enginnering team grew from 20 people to over 700.
"For me, the decision to leave was not easy, let alone saying goodbye to the many incredible people I get to work with every day," Noble said in a blog post. "But I felt that after 11 wonderful years at Google, and a few more decades tinkering around technology, the time was right to turn my focus towards my other great passion -- protecting our oceans."
Noble will be replaced by Google vice president of product Anil Sabharwal, who will continue to lead the search giant's personal communications and photos work.
Sabharwal has had a previous four-year stint in Sydney, after which he headed to Google HQ in Mountain View to lead the team that made Google Photos, as well as overseeing products such as video calling app Duo, Android's upgraded SMS protocol RCS implementation, and mobile virtual network Project Fi.
"I'm thrilled to be home," Sabharwal said. "Australia has some of the most talented engineers in the world, and our Sydney office will continue to work on efforts that make big impact at a global scale."
Yesterday, the search giant announced it had opened an early access program for businesses to send RCS messages to users in the US, and said RCS messages would be available more broadly in the coming months.
Last week, Project Fi was expanded to include roaming in 170 nations, including Morocco, Guam, Jordan, and Uganda.
Project Fi is only available in the US.
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