21 January 2017, USA:
Amit Singhal, the former Google engineer who helped perfect the search engine’s ranking algorithm, is joining Uber as senior vice president of engineering.
Singhal said in a blog post, “After 15 wonderful years at Google working on search, I wasn’t sure that I would find an opportunity as exciting or potentially world-changing. But having spent hours with Travis and many others at the company, I can confidently say Uber fits the bill.”
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“I was indeed leaving Google to spend more times on things that I wanted to do, giving back, to my family, and with the foundation that my wife and I had set up many years prior, but that we were unable to do many things with that we’d hoped to do,” Singhal explained in an interview. “I basically dumped myself into the foundation, and family – by driving my son to school every morning and picking him up – and on the foundation side I’ve been traveling to India every three months to get that foundation program that we’re running off the ground.”
Catching the next ride of my professional journey with @travisk at @Uber pic.twitter.com/EGQn7VQTDJ
— Amit Singhal (@theamitsinghal) January 20, 2017
Travis Kalanick, CEO of Uber said, “I love Amit’s excitement for solving complex computer science problems and his passion for helping improve people’s lives through technology. The team at Uber, myself included, will learn a lot from him, and I can’t wait for him to get started.”
As per Digital Trends’ report, Singhal will work closely with Anthony Levandowski, who leads Uber’s self-driving car division. In his new position, Singhal will be tasked with leading Uber’s Maps and Marketplace, and will aim to bolster Uber’s self-driving engineering team. (Image- Search Engineland)