Google Cloud Poaches Ubuntu's VP of Product

After being at Canonical for a decade (aside from a brief stint at Gazzang), Dustin Kirkland who most recently served as the company's VP of Product, is joining Google.

Dustin Kirkland managed the product teams for Ubuntu server, cloud, desktop and IoT the past five years while he's been an open-source developer since the late 90's and continues to maintain many Ubuntu packages himself. Dustin is a highly-skilled developer and manager while now he will be focusing his efforts on the Google Cloud.

Kirkland announced the change in employers last night via his blog. He will be a product manager at Google for helping to "bridge the divide between public cloud resources and private infrastructure for enterprise users."

He's been a great asset to Ubuntu/Canonical, but he says he will be sticking around in the Ubuntu community maintaining packages and possibly working more with Debian too.

Congratulations to Dustin on his new job.