It looks like the shakeups at Google this week aren’t over yet. Following Andy Rubin’s departure from the Android team and some “spring cleaning” that stuck a fork in Google Reader, The Wall Street Journal is now reporting that the company is breaking up its mapping and commerce unit. According to the paper, maps will now be a part of Google’s search unit, while commerce will fall under the advertising group. What’s more, the WSJ also reports that the head of that soon-to-be-former unit, Jeff Huber, will be moving to Google X, the lab responsible for projects like Glass and Google’s self-driving car.
Update: Jeff Huber has now posted a brief statement on both Google+ and Twitter. He says, “finishing up my first decade at Google, and excited to return to my startup roots and begin the next one at Google X!” A Google spokesperson has also issued the following statement:
“Jeff is an extraordinary executive. He just finished his first decade at Google — having worked on some of our most complicated issues like ads, apps, payments and geo — and now he is eager to work in more of a start up like environment.”
Source: The Wall Street Journal
American Express announced today their partnership to allow American Express card members to make purchases by tweeting. “You can turn a hashtag into more than just a conversation–you can turn it into a trigger that actually can spark commerce,” says Joel Lunenfeld, VP global brand strategy at Twitter. It works like this: AmEx card members need to first sync their eligible cards with twitter. The card member can then use special #hashtags to make their purchase and wait for verification from Amex. Card members then need to tweet the verification in order to confirm their purchase and voila, their purchase is delivered to the registered billing address. 
