It looks like the webOS contingent at HP isn’t done losing people. HP laid off 275 webOS employees back in February shortly after they announced their plans for the Open webOS project, and now their Enyo team is being picked apart.
The Verge reported late last night that key members of the Enyo team have left their posts at HP, and will migrate over to Google.
Enyo, in case you’re not steeped in webOS lore, is a JavaScript framework that allows devs to “build and maintain HTML5 applications of any size and complexity” that debuted alongside the ill-fated TouchPad. Considering that the platform is meant to help devs create platform-agnostic apps that can be tailored either for the web or for a mobile device, the team behind it apparently made for an enticing target for Google.
Though initial rumblings made it seem like the entire team up and left, it’s since been revealed that only a handful of HP employees will be making the transition. AllThingsD reported last night that Google has been working out these talent acquisitions on a person-by-person basis rather than swooping in and taking the whole lot of them. Unfortunately, Enyo Senior Director Matt McNulty is one of the people making the transition to Google, and they’re expected to regroup in Mountain View some time next month.
Despite how things sound, it’s not completely over for the project — it’s damned near impossible to kill an open source project once its out in the open, and HP has said that business will continue as usual:
We’re pleased with the traction Enyo has gained to date and plan to continue its development along with the open source community. The Open webOS project is on schedule and we remain committed to the roadmap announced in January.
And what will Matt McNulty and the rest of the ex-HP crew be doing at Google? Surely some of them will end up working on Android, especially given that Android User Experience Director Matias Duarte led up Palm’s design efforts on the little mobile OS that couldn’t until he left just after HP’s acquisition. With Enyo focused on allowing developers to create cross-platform applications that play nice with web browsers, some of that new blood could trickle into Google’s Chrome and ChromeOS divisions.
Of course, this isn’t the only notable departure that HP is dealing with at the moment. The news comes just two days after HP revealed that they would be axing 27,000 jobs in an attempt to save $3.5 billion by 2014.