Amit Singhal is to join online transportation network company
Uber. With headquarters in San Francisco, California, United States, Uber has revolutionized how people travel by establishing a network of private car owners who pick passengers and send them to their destinations in the same fashion taxis do. Mr. Singhal joins Uber as its Senior Vice President for Engineering.
Mr. Singhal worked at search and cloud giant Google for over 15 years and was in the company’s first batch of employees. He was formerly Google’s Senior Vice President for Search and at one stage in charge of rewriting Google’s search algorithms. In his new position he will be under Travis Kalanick, the CEO of Uber, and be responsible for developing the software infrastructure that drives Uber’s activity. He will be in charge of the company’s mapping activity and involved in marketing and related activities. He will also work with Anthony Levandowski on Ubers’ self-driving cars initiative.
Google and Uber have both been doing research into autonomous vehicles for a number of years, with Uber publically admitting its intention to surpass Google in this area. Mr. Singhal joins a number of Uber employees who formally worked at Google, including Anthony Levandowski.
“First and foremost, I am a huge fan of Uber’s product,” Mr. Singhal wrote on his personal blog, which was reproduced on Uber’s website. “Like many people, I can’t remember life before you could push a button and have a car show up in minutes. But what’s most exciting to me is the real-world impact this simple idea—push a button, get a ride—is having in cities around the world.”
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