If you plan on stealing a development team from another tech company you might want to give Google’s recently play on the HP webOS Enyo HTML5 team. The search giant has been slowly hiring members from the HP project one-at-a-time.
According to a report by AllThingsD Google managed to grab half a dozen of the programs top workers including project chief Matt McNulty. Original reports had stated that most of the team had been snatched up by Google.
Despite losing some of its key members HP released the following statement regarding Google’s power play:
“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.”
Since acquiring webOS from Palm the team at HP has repackaged the software for the open-source community and Open WebOS has become heavily dependent on Enyo for both its app and browser rendering. Developers have already downloaded Enyo 40,000 times since it was released just three weeks ago. After Google’s acquisition of major team members some in the developer community were worried the project would be abandoned which led HP to release its statement.
In the meantime it is easy to understand why the HP webOS Enyo HTML team would so easily jump ship, HP has already laid off upwards of 275 webOS employees.
After several months of negotiations the former HP employees are all expected to join Google in June.
