Gundotra Subtracts Himself from Google+

Google+Vic Gundotra, the man who launched Google+ in June 2011 promising to fix online sharing, is leaving the company, casting doubts on Google’s plans for the service.

Gundotra leaves Google after eight years with the company. Announcing his departure, Gundotra wrote in a blog post that he was “forever in debt to the Google+ team. This is a group of people who built social at Google against the skepticism of so many. The growth of active users is staggering, and speaks to the work of this team. But it doesnt tell you what kind of people they are. They are invincible dreamers. I love them. And I will miss them dearly.”

While some would argue that Gundotra’s departure marks the end of Google’s attempt to push Google+ as a serious competitor to Facebook and Twitter, there are those who feel it was never intended as such, but rather as a way creating a unified login, gathering together users data across all of Googles various products. In any event, it looks like one phase of the exercise is over.

Separately, Google, together with Apple, Adobe and Intel have settled a class action suit brought by 64,000 of their employees out of court who accused them of having an agreement not to poach each other’s employees. Rumours suggest the value of the settlement was around $300m, which if true, at less than $5,000 per claimant, looks like small beer to say the least.