Android engineering VP Dave Burke has stepped down after an achievement-packed 14 years with Android.
Since the company’s early days, Burke has been responsible for many of the features and tools we take for granted today. Here are just a few of his achievements:
- Building and shipping early Android phones like Nexus, Galaxy, and Google Pixel 1-7 devices.
- Developing Chrome for mobile in 2012, forever changing how we access the web on the go, and inventing fun new ways to search online.
- Bringing powerful tools to developers, including Android Studio (2013), Kotlin (2017), and Jetpack Compose (2019).
- Launching Android TV back in June 2014.
- Introducing life-saving features like Earthquake Alerts, Emergency Location Service, COVID-19 exposure notifications, and Car Crash Detection.
- And much, much more, including innovation of foldable form factors, establishing computational photography, and ensuring higher-quality, more frequent trunk stable OS releases.
When Burke started at Android 14 years ago, the platform looked very different. 2010 was only five years since Google’s acquisition, though the familiar little green Bugdroid logo was already well established.
According to Android Authority, Android 2.2 Froyo was released that year, with innovative new features like Wi-Fi mobile hotspots. 2.3 Gingerbread followed, bringing NFC functions to compatible smartphones. Consumers saw the launch of the Nexus One and the Nexus S, and Chrome for mobile was still a twinkle in Burke’s eye.
Over a decade later, the landscape for Android couldn’t look more different. Burke and his team helped grow Android users from 1 million to over 3 billion.
In his heartfelt LinkedIn post, Burke spoke of a “well-thought-out succession plan,” promising more specifics on this soon and finishing with the advice, “Take the work seriously, but yourself not so much.”