Gone again: James Gosling leaves Google

James Gosling: father of the Java programming language

James Gosling, who is considered the father of the Java programming language, has left Google less than six months after joining the company. He has now signed up as Chief Software Architect at a small Californian company, Liquid Robotics.

Start-up company Liquid Robotics manufactures unmanned maritime vehicles that use various sensors to collect maritime data and upload it to a cloud as Data-as-a-Service (DaaS), practically in real time. "Wave Glider" devices only use wave motion energy to cruise the waters and are used for research by such organisations as the National Ocean and Atmospheric Administration's National Data Buoy Center, the Pacific Marine Environmental Laboratory and the University of Hawaii.

Gosling had joined Google at the end of March without being able to provide an exact job description at the time. He had previously taken a one-year sabbatical, after leaving Oracle in April 2010. It appears he had been dissatisfied with the conditions offered by the database giant after the company took over Sun Microsystems in January of that year.

Gosling's departure from Google seems to have been amicable. On his blog, Gosling himself writes that he is surprised at leaving Google again after such a short time. He said that he "met some folks outside doing something completely outrageous". At Liquid Robotics, Gosling will work under Sun veteran Bill Vass, who is the start-up's Chief Executive Officer (CEO).

(ehe)