According to Recode, Essential CEO Andy Rubin is making his return to the company following a leave of absence. Rubin took a leave of absence from the company in late October following a report in The Information. In the report, it said Rubin being involved in an “inappropriate relationship” prior to his leave from Google. A spokesperson for Rubin had denied to allegations.
Recode makes a note that neither Rubin or Essential would comment about the situation, but said that Rubin’s return will help ease worries about the company after it failed to attract wide attention on its first product launch.
Rubin is expected to be working on the company’s next product offering, the Essential Home. The Essential Home is designed to take on the smart speaker industry and directly compete with the likes of Amazon Echo and Google Home. Though its focus will be on local data processing to keep information away from the cloud as much as possible.
The Essential Home was reportedly going to arrive over the summer, but the company decided to push back the launch after it kept running into delays for the Essential Phone. If you managed to pick up the Essential Phone this Black Friday or Cyber Monday (and like it), then you may want to pick up the Essential Home in the future, whenever the product is released.
