Earlier this week, Hugo Barra, the former Google executive who from 2010 to 2013 was the spokesperson for Android, announced he was leaving Xiaomi to return to Silicon Valley.
He wasn’t specific about his destination at that time, but it turns out Silicon Valley, in this case, meant Menlo Park, the home of social media giant Facebook.
Late last night, Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg announced the hiring of Barra on his company’s social network.
“Hugo Barra is joining Facebook to lead all of our virtual reality efforts, including our Oculus team,” he said. “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…”
“I can’t wait to get started in building that future and join the team in a couple of months,” said Barra in a comment following Zuckerberg’s post. “It’s been a dream of mine to work in virtual reality even back when AR/VR were just figments of science fiction; now we’re taking selfies in virtual worlds.”
Barra joins Oculus at a time when the company finds itself at a challenging crossroads. Not only is the company engaged in a high-stakes lawsuit with ZeniMax Media, but former Oculus CEO Brendan Iribe also stepped down from his position at the end of last year to lead a smaller group within Oculus.
[source]Facebook[/source]
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