In a twist of fate, Barefoot Networks – a start-up networking tech company which was actually backed by Google in 2016 – has now acquired former Alphabet Inc employee, Craig Barratt. After joining Alphabet Inc in 2013, Barratt served as CEO for one of the company’s subsidiaries, called Access, before leaving in October of last year. The company made the announcement via its official website blog on February 7 and revealed that Barratt is taking over in the role of CEO at Barefoot Networks.
Before taking on his role at Alphabet Inc’s Access subsidiary, Barratt also served in positions as CEO and President at Atheros from 2003 through its acquisition by Qualcomm in 2011. The most notable of the programs overseen by Barratt during his time as a CEO of the Access subsidiary is Google Fiber. The Access program effectively acts as a central hub to several of the company’s offshoot efforts into the internet access, energy, and robotics sectors, which includes Google’s fiber optic internet efforts. Although Google Fiber has not been a resounding success, all of Barratt’s previous experiences give him an extensive knowledge base to pull from. In fact, Barefoot Networks cites Barratt’s knowledge in both team and product building as reasons for the new hire, as well as current CEO Martin Izzard’s desire to return to a different role. Izzard will be stepping down and transitioning into a role as VP of Technology, allowing the co-founder to refocus directly on the current and emergent technology trends that had initially prompted the formation of the company. Izzard also co-authored the official announcement, stating that the company is confident that by bringing Barratt on board and utilizing his industry wisdom it will be able to continue its current growth trends at a more accelerated rate.
Barefoot Networks itself was co-founded by Nick McKeown, Pat Bosshart, Dan Lenoski, and Martin Izzard in 2013, with the goal of improving on previous networking technologies and building new advancements in the field. Its first network switching hardware, the open-source powered and fully-programmable Tofino chip, is reportedly capable of speeds up to 6.5Tbps. A primary objective of the company is to enable “fundamental disruptions” to industries dependent on network switching. If the disruptions that Google Fiber seems to have caused to the home internet markets are anything to gauge by, it can at least be said they’ve certainly picked the right man for the job.