Krishna Thapa
Last Sunday, the 22nd, the Brazilian Hugo Barra, one of the most relevant executives of Silicon Valley, announced his return to Facebook. After three and a half years at Xiaomi , a Chinese company of which he was the international ambassador , he has just announced his hiring by Facebook to run the virtual reality Oculus division .
Mark Zuckerberg , chief executive and founder of the social network, was the first to celebrate Barra’s new venture. For this, he used an image of their avatars together in the room, better known as aquarium, where Zuckerberg works. However, they are not together yet. The image is a nod to what they want to build and has already appeared at the annual Oculus conference . “I am encouraged by the fact that Hugo Barra will lead our efforts at Oculus. Although he is currently in China , Hugo and I are together in virtual reality. This seems to make sense. I’ve known Hugo for a long time, when he started building Android . In recent years he worked at Xiaomi in Beijing , Where he got innovative gadgets to reach millions of people. Hugo shares the conviction that virtual reality will be the next big platform. Thanks to him we will be more creative than ever, “celebrated Zuckerberg on his mural.
For Facebook , virtual reality is the key platform for the future. In its plans, the company sees itself as the ecosystem where its profiles will interconnect leaving, leaving behind the barriers of physical space. The budget to make this reality is three billion dollars (9.5 billion reais) in the next 10 years.
Barra is not oblivious to this phenomenon. While on Xiaomi, he presented his helmet model, plus a sure bet on Daydream , the version of his previous company, Google .
During the last World Cellular Congress of Barcelona, Barra’s presence at Xiaomi was one of the most outstanding, at the premiere of China’s most idolized brand in the Catalan event. This year, Xiaomi will not be present at the fair.
Barra, born in Belo Horizonte in 1976, is a great connoisseur of Latin America . He speaks fluent Spanish, with a Colombian accent, and studied at MIT in Boston, where, along with his project partners, he founded Lobby 7. This startup was acquired by Nuance, dedicated to voice recognition. From there he went to Google, where he was in charge of an ephemeral social network, Buzz , and then integrated into the Android project, where he started to shine. In August 2013 left Google amid a controversy , but with all the affection of the industry and the most enthusiastic consumers. His unexpected departure had a certain personal aspect, since his then girlfriend , Amanda Rosenberg, model of Google Glass , had a secret relationship with Sergey Brin, co-founder of Google. A few months later, Brin divorced Anne Wojcicki, now chief executive of 23 and me , a startup dedicated to genetic analysis. The hiring of Barra by Facebook, Google’s fiercest enemy, seals the Brazilian’s revenge.
