Lead Designer of webOS Flees to Google

From DailyTech: Just when you thought that things had quieted down a bit on the Palm front, this interesting bit of news just came across the news wires. Earlier this morning, it was reported that Matias Duarte, the man who lead that team that developed the webOS UI, was leaving Palm. At the time, no one knew where Duarte was heading following his departure from the mobile firm that was recently acquired by HP.

However, All Things Digital is now reporting that Duarte is heading to none other than Google. Google confirmed that Duarte will join the company as the User Experience Director for Android.

Google is gaining quite a bit of momentum in the smartphone market and Android-based smartphones recently bolted ahead of Apple's iPhone according to numbers from marker research firm NPD. The company is also taking the fight straight to Apple and RIM with new features in Android 2.2 including native tethering/Wi-Fi hotspot, support for Adobe Flash 10.1, faster application performance, and over the air syncing for apps and music.

The addition of Duarte is a great boon for Google as its stock Android UI could definitely use a bit of polish. Some manufacturers take care of this themselves by developing their own "user experiences" such as HTC's Sense, but it would be nice to see a more sleek interface come straight from Google and Duarte seems like the right man for the job.

Duarte was on stage during CES 2009 to show off the Pre during its official unveil. At the time, Duarte poked fun at the iPhone's lack of a keyboard and user-replaceable battery. In the end, Palm's Pre (and it's little brother, the Pixi) ended up being a sales dud on both Sprint and Verizon's network. However, webOS has been the real star of the show and is destined to live on in future products from HP.

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