Google appoints new leader for Google Plus Photos and 'Streams'

Just last week, Forbes conducted an interview with Google’s Sundar Pichai. In that interview, the Google exec hinted that the future of Google+ could see the company “focus on [Hangouts], photos, and the Google+ stream as three important areas, rather than being thought of as one area.” And now it seems that Google is doing just that, as it has been confirmed that Product Vice President Bradley Horowitz is now in charge of Photos and what he refers to as Streams (the social component of G+).

This change in leadership comes only 11 months after David Besbris took the helm, replacing Vic Gundotra. While details remain scarce on what exactly will happen with the social network going forward, here’s the statement released by Horowitz on Google+:

Just wanted to confirm that the rumors are true — I’m excited to be running Google’s Photos and Streams products! It’s important to me that these changes are properly understood to be positive improvements to both our products and how they reach users.

The wording of his statement is careful in way, as he mentions that he wants folks to understand that Photos and Streams diverging somewhat as two products under his leadership is a “positive improvement”. That’s a way of saying, “don’t jump to conclusions about the death of Google Plus just yet” — though we doubt that will stop anyone. So what about Hangouts? It’s pretty obvious that Google’s video, voice and text messaging service still carries a lot of weight for the company and it seems likely that Hangouts will begin to be viewed as more of an independent project and less as part of the Google+ club. As for who is running it and what’s next for the service, we really don’t know at this point.

The future of Google+ and its related components may be up in the air a bit, but, at least for now, we don’t expect any of the aspects of Google+ to go away. We’re sure that we will hear more about Google’s plans in the near future, possibly at Pichai’s MWC keynote speech a bit later this morning. What do you think about Google changing up G+ leadership again? Are you still happy with Google+, Photos and Hangouts?