While the tech industry is pretty much on a shutdown due to the holiday season, something rather peculiar has popped out today. Andy Rubin, who is the creator of Android and Essential has mysteriously decided to block everyone off from his Twitter. Called the ‘Father of Android’, he has been instrumental to the developments in the tech industry and without him, Android OS probably would not have even existed.
However, all of his great work has been tarnished over the years due to various reasons. Andy Rubin is a very famous name in the industry for both good and bad reasons. After leaving Google, he founded Essential which brought one of the most promising smartphones out there.
The failure of the Essential Phone
The Essential Phone or Essential PH1 was one of the first phones that broke the conventional smartphone design and got rid of massive bezels on the screen.
Essential Phone was also one of the very first phones to have a notch at the top, which later became an industry standard. However, the Essential Phone’s notch was still smaller than most phones out there these days, which is still an amazing feat considering the phone came out over 2 years ago. Despite the innovative design and build of the phone though, it failed to grab most people’s attention and didn’t quite sell very well.
The Essential Phone’s failure was mostly because of its high price point and a rather underwhelming camera performance. However, the phone has continued to get software updates to this day and has also seen a massive price reduction. After Essential Phone, however, Andy Rubin decided to take a break away from the tech industry for a while.
However, a few months ago, he logged back onto twitter and teased a possible follow-up to the Essential Phone with yet another drastic change in design language. The alleged Essential Phone 2 looked unlike anything we’d ever seen with an extremely tall form factor and some cool tricks up its sleeve. After the reveal though, Rubin decided to go silent yet again with no tweets on his account for weeks.
Allegations of sexual misconduct
And now, a lot of people have noticed that Andy Rubin has actually pretty much blocked everyone from his Twitter with only a few people being able to see his tweets. There could be a couple of reasons why he did this.
Back in October 2018, the New York Times broke out a story about Andy Rubin that he had allegedly been involved in sexual misconduct during his time at Google and the company gave him a “hero’s farewell” while hiding these facts about him. Not only that, Google also handed him a whopping $90 million cheque on his way out which was just insult to injury to the victims of his sexual misconduct.
Andy Rubin did issue a statement after the news story broke out though. “Specifically, I never coerced a woman to have sex in a hotel room. These false allegations are part of a smear campaign by my ex-wife to disparage me during a divorce and custody battle.”, Said Rubin in response to the allegations.
Google CEO Sundar Pichai was also quick to shut down these allegations by saying that Google has already fired over 50 people for sexual misconduct over the last 2 years and things like these are not taken lightly at the company.
However, ever since that news story, people have been trying to get the whole matter investigated with constant tweets directed at him about the entire situation at Google. Maybe, Rubin has blocked everyone off from Twitter avoid getting tweeted at all the time. Or, this could be part of a long con to market the upcoming bizarre phone from Essential.
?? Don’t ask me why lol
— David ImeI (@DurvidImel) December 12, 2019
In any case, the whole situation is really bizarre and no one knows what is going through the mind of Andy Rubin right now. Furthermore, why did he choose to not block certain people from his Twitter, a lot of which are tech reporters? There might be a hidden depth and meaning to this that we don’t realise right now but all we can do for now is wait.