Google Now’s Staff Exodus Reveals Hurdles for New CEO Pichai

On Thursday, Microsoft fired up an old rivalry. The Redmond giant released an update to its Bing search app that allows other apps to tap into its information architecture. See something in one mobile app — a nice location shot in Instagram, say — and, with a tap, you can summon information about that something via Bing.
Nothing earth-shattering. But Microsoft happened to put out the release on Android first, and did so right before Google is set to launch Now on Tap, a nearly identical feature.

Google teased the product with some fanfare in May, at its I/O developer conference, as a breakthrough iteration of Google Now, its personal assistant and one of the twin bedrocks for CEO Larry Page when he returned as executive in 2011.
What went unannounced was that most of the original team that built Now had departed, many of them just before I/O, according to multiple sources. Some had grown frustrated that the product, born within Android, was shuttered into search inside of Google, they said. And Sundar Pichai, Google’s SVP and incoming CEO, did not prioritize the product as much as Page.
The exits reveal the hiccups Google has incubating new products that reach across multiple units of the tech giant. They also expose some key traits of Pichai’s leadership style — and some of the many hurdles he has ahead as he marshals Google’s core business.