Why did the former Stadia head leave Google quietly?

Former head of Google Stadia and Vice President of Google Phil Harriosn left Google unknowingly. Reportedly, two employees who were aware of the news said that Harrison left Google quietly in January, around the time game streaming service Google Stadia shut down after a major failure in a competitive gaming market. But Harrison’s LinkedIn profile suggests that he ended his journey with the search engine shark this month only.

In 2018 Harrison joined Google after spending over a decade with Sony and three years at Microsoft. In GDC 2019, he lamented the platform as the “future of gaming”. With its initial launch Stadia was offering players access to their favorite games like Assassin’s Creed, Cyberpunk 2077 and Red Dead Redemption 2, through Google cloud service without the need of any high end hardware component. He also hosted ‘connect streams’ to showcase the games being added to the service.

In 2021, Stadia fell headlong as it failed to attract gamers into their services. Harrison wrote a blog post commencing the closure of Stadia games and Entertainment. On 29thSeptember 2022 he announced that Stadia were shutting down for their own good this January and disappeared from the public eye. From then on Google started issuing refunds to the gamers who purchased Stadia peripherals through Google Play Store.

For now it is unknown about Harrison’s next employer and no closure on why he left. Google recently stated that it wasn’t a good idea to create a cloud gaming service on its own, although they will collaborate with other game giants to support their live gaming service over Google cloud.