Palm's User Interface Designer Matias Duarte Leaves WebOS and Heads to Google

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When the Palm Pre was still on the drawing board it was generating quite a bit of hype and had many users following its every move. The device itself was nice but it wasn’t really something we hadn’t seen before. Instead, the real star was Palm’s (at the time) brand new mobile operating system webOS.

Initially released right along side the Palm Pre on June 6th, 2009, webOS showed off a sleek and innovative user interface that gave users highly sought after features like multitasking which was done with a never before seen deck of cards interface. After making is debut on the Palm Pre, the operating system saw its release on several other devices including the Palm Pixi and then later the Palm Pre Plus and Palm Pixi Plus.

Flash forward a bit and Palm is currently undergoing a complete buyout by HP, one of the world’s premiere electronics manufacturers. Well, it seems that things didn’t go so smoothly for some as it was just announced that Palm’s senior director of human interface and user experience, Matias Duarte, will be stepping down from his position and heading over to Google, effective immediately.

Duarte’s new position at Google will, presumably, be largely similar to his position at Palm as his new title over at Google is User Experience Director for Android. Now, there’s no telling if this was completely by Duarte’s own decision or if Google offered him some incentives to make the jump but there’s no question that it’s certainly a win for Android.

While Android is a feature packed, open source mobile operating system that is seeing an ever increasing market share, users have complained that its user interface isn’t as streamlined and simple as say the iPhone OS or webOS. Now that Matias Duarte, the man behind most of webOS’ most critically acclaimed features, is now on board at Google and working on Android, we can hope to see some great new innovative features for the open source operating system.