Chrome and Android get just that much closer with management shakeup

Sergey Brin has said in the past that Chrome and Android were likely to one day conjoin, but that it was likely going to be a slow process that occurred over time. According to a report this afternoon from The Wall Street Journal, Hiroshi Lockheimer, Google’s VP of engineering for Android, has now been put in charge of overseeing the Chrome engineering team as well.

The previous head of Chrome engineering, Linus Upson, has left the position and it’s not exactly clear what he’ll be doing—or not doing—from this point forward.

Notably, Google hasn’t been shy about its intentions to converge the two operating systems—at least to some degree. At Google I/O 2014, the company announced its initiative making it much easier for developers to modify their apps to run on Chrome OS. If this ever comes to fruition, it’s going to make things much easier for companies that currently have to deploy separate versions of their apps for both operating systems.

According to one of The Wall Street Journal’s sources, Sundar Pichai choosing Lockheimer to lead Chrome engineering is a sign to his teams that “Android is the future,” which can lead one to assume that it’s more likely for Chrome to become more like Android over time rather than vice versa. Obviously, this reflects which of the two is currently winning in market share, with Android strong as a bull and Chrome OS growing but small.