It's about an hour ago the disconcerting news that Hugo Barra joined the Facebook team to drive the VR business, including the Oculus team (VR: Virtual Reality VR and Hardware) acquired by Facebook in 2014). These are Mark Zuckerberg's words on his bulletin board:
I'm excited that Hugo Barra is joining Facebook to lead all of our virtual reality efforts, including our Oculus team. Hugo's in China right now, so here we are together in VR. It seems fitting.
I've known Hugo for a long time, starting when he helped develop the Android operating system, to the last few years he worked at Xiaomi in Beijing bringing innovative devices to millions of people.
Hugo shares my belief that virtual and augmented reality will be the next major computing platform. They'll enable us to experience completely new things and be more creative than ever before. Hugo is going to help build that future, and I'm looking forward to having him on our team.
Translated:
I am thrilled that Hugo Barra has joined Facebook to lead all of our VR efforts, including our Oculus team. Hugo is in China now, so we are together in VR. Seems appropriate.
I've known Hugo for a long time since he contributed to developing the Android operating system until the last few years when he worked at Xiaomi in Beijing bringing innovative devices to millions of people.
Hugo shares my thought that virtual reality will be the next major computing platform. It will allow us to try completely new things and be more creative than ever before. Hugo will help build that future, and I can not wait to have it in our team.
Among the answers, one can find that of Hugo Barra himself in which he thanks Mark and says he will reach the team in a couple of months. He also explains that it was one of his dreams to work in the VR field even when VR itself looked something like science fiction. In his words Barra also cites CEO Xiaomi Lei Jun saying that he has learned from him in believing that in the technology sector there is no better purpose than taking innovative technology and making it available to the highest number of people.
Everything is also confirmed by a post by Hugo Barra on his Twitter account that refers to Zuckerberg:
This news follows the resignation of Vice President Global Announcements just three days ago, when Barra said that moving across the ocean had been a beautiful and exciting experience but had brought him health problems and a lot of nostalgia for the house.
But trying to find out about a relationship that is not very relaxed between CEO Xiaomi and Lei Jun and a proximity to Zuckerberg who may not have been very well seen. In this article of the South China Morning Post 2013, shows the reaction of Lei Jun, translated: congratulations to the new follower, as published by his now ex VP at Weibo:
Has Barra's urge to explore new horizons beyond Xiaomi? But above all, what personally lets me think is that these two short-distance ads have been somehow programmed and that Zuckerberg managed to "steal" Barra at Xiaomi at a rather delicate moment for Chinese company. It would be interesting to see the reactions of Barra's colleagues, but for the moment everyone is silent in China.
What do you think about this choice of Barra and its future in Facebook?
