The entire Android community and Android Open Source Project (AOSP) has suffered a great loss this month, as the lead technical engineer known as Jean-Baptiste Queru left the team last month and has now been hired by Yahoo. We all know him as JBQ, who’s done fine work managing Android’s source code, but now he’s no longer with Google.
This all stems back to last month when he made the details public regarding Qualcomm’s patents which were preventing him from managing and releasing the factory images for the new Nexus 7. Essentially stating he didn’t want to go to work in the morning, and that he was quitting AOSP. It’s a little bittersweet, and here’s what it all came down to.
There’s no point being the maintainer of an Operating System that can’t boot to the home screen on its flagship device for lack of GPU support, especially when I’m getting the blame for something that I don’t have authority to fix myself and that I had anticipated and escalated more than 6 months ahead.” — JBQ
This morning JBQ confirmed the news on Twitter, stating he’ll be in charge of mobile app development and engineering for Yahoo. According to reports he actually “quit” or left Google last month, and yesterday was his first day with Yahoooooo!
The folks from Yahoo haven’t had the best of luck lately with Android apps, and it took them forever to launch their Weather app for Android, which has been on iOS for quite a while. Hopefully this move will help their entire presence on Android, at least in terms of quality apps.
We are sad to see him go, but wish him luck with Yahoo and everything else moving forward.
VIA: Gigaom
