Google hires former Amazon exec to help with phones division development

Talking about meeting the right person at the right time. It looks like Google is plans to hire one of the artisans of Amazon's Kindle lineup, David Foster, to run its phones development. The move hasn't been made official yet, but sources in the industry say that it's just a matter of days until Google makes the announcement.

David Foster is one of the important peoples behind Amazon's Kindle project, but that ended earlier this week when he took a job at the Mountain View-based search giant. Foster will act as vice president of product engineering for Google's hardware group, an official confirmed recently.

Basically, Amazon's former exec will be in charge with hardware development for Google's new Pixel smartphones, or whatever they will be named. Foster doesn't take anyone's place since the position was vacant, so there's no one leaving Google just yet.

Google's new addition to its staff suggests that the company is concerned about the future of its hardware division and that smartphones are not just an occasional business for the search giant.

According to the new reports, David Foster will report directly to Rick Osterloh. If you didn't know, the latter is the former Motorola executive, who's now leading Google's hardware projetcs.

Foster's LinkedIn profile indicates that his latest job was within Amazon's Lab126 team, which usually outed the Echo and Dash products.

It's also worth mentioning that before working at Amazon, David Foster was a Microsoft employee, having worked for on the company's hardware division helping with the Zune HD development. And if that's not enough, Foster was also with Apple for around five years as well, where he helped develop hardware components for various devices.