The VP of Google Pay and the Next Billion Users initiative departs after 15 years

Google’s Vice President of Pay and the Next Billion User’s initiative, Ceasar Sengupta, departs Google today, after 15 years of service. He took to LinkedIn and Twitter to announce his leave and say his farewells. Mr. Sengupta also oversaw Chrome OS for a while as its VP before John Solomon took over. He began with the company in 2006 and helped to create the long-gone but beloved Google Desktop and Toolbar tools. He spent many of those years working on the revamped Google Pay which recently released as well.

In his goodbye letter, he had plenty of kind words to say about the friendships and working relationships he had built over the years. Regarding Chrome OS, he had the following to say:

ChromeOS team: congratulations on making ChromeOS the #2 OS in the world! You’ve changed how students learn in millions of classrooms & homes around the world and are on track to make computers truly accessible to everyone, everywhere!

His contributions to the Next Billion Users initiative – a program that Google began in order to bring the next billion users around the world online and to help them get connected using Google services – seem to have been extensive. His last day at Google is April 30, 2021. His departure is, of course, a positive thing as he intends to pursue his other passions, so if you hear anyone state that it’s bad for Chrome OS, Google Pay, or any other initiative he was plugged into, I would probably not take them at their word – Googlers leave the company all the time, and it seems to be almost an incubator for startups. Here’s what Ceasar had to say about his plans for the future:

I haven’t decided what I will start next. I am going to take some time to chill, talk to interesting people, reconnect with the external world and ride my bike (my latest obsession, picked up during the lockdown)! I know that my decision may come as a shock to many of you, and I apologize for any pain or disappointment this might cause. But you’ve often heard me say that our time on earth is our most precious resource, and it’s time for me to find a new way to make my impact on it.