A senior Google executive who headed a push to bring more users to Google+ has announced that he is leaving the company after about eight years.
Vic Gundotra, 45, came from Microsoft and had been working as Google's senior vice president of engineering. He announced his departure in a post on his Google+ account on Thursday, Bloomberg Businessweek reported.
In the post, Gundotra thanked his fellow Google employees and reminisced about his time at the Mountain View, Calif.-headquartered company; however, he said it was time to move on.
"Now is the time for a new journey," he wrote. "I am excited about what's next. But this isn't the day to talk about that. This is a day to celebrate the past 8 years. To cry. And smile. And to look forward to the journey yet to come."
Gundotra, who rose to senior vice president of engineering in 2011, didn't share any details on what he will do next. In a separate post, Google CEO Larry Page thanked the former engineering executive and wished him good luck for future projects.
The company has had a substantial amount of management shuffling in the past few years, bidding farewell to Marissa Meyer, who left and became Yahoo's CEO, and Andy Rubin, who served as head of the Android operating system.
Google+ hasn't come close to Facebook levels of bringing in users, but the platform gained some momentum under Gundotra's direction. In October, Google introduced 18 new features for the social network that emphasize editing photos and videos.
The tech giant said at the time that 540 million users visit Google+ at least monthly, while 300 million keep up with their friends by looking at the site's content stream. In comparison, Facebook this week reported 1.28 billion monthly active users.
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