Google X's Sebastian Thrun is no longer vice president

The man behind Google X, the Internet giant's "secret laboratory" of sorts, has left his roles as Vice President and Fellow. So says Sebastian Thrun's LinkedIn profile via a change made last month, which lead to confirmation from Google about Thrun's shift in focus.

The news was first reported by TechCrunch, which received word from some anonymous fellow who spotted an edit to Thrun's LinkedIn. As of August of this year, Thrun was no longer serving as Vice President and Fellow at Google X, serving instead only as an advisor.

The discovery of this change resulted in a statement by a Google spokesperson, who said to TechCrunch:

As the co-founder of Google[x] and our self-driving car project, Sebastian made huge advances in computer science and robotics that have paved the way for autonomous driving technology. In his role as an advisor to Google[x] over the past couple years, he has provided invaluable inspiration and perspective to a variety of projects. In Udacity, Sebastian has his own more-than-a-full-time-job moonshot to take, and we wish him well.

Though no official reason for the change has been given, the above statement seems to indicate the move came to lend greater focus towards education-centric Udacity. Thrun has served at Google since 2007, and was the founder of the Google X lab, where exciting new creations are formed.

SOURCE: TechCrunch