Andy Rubin, who sold his Android company to Google in 2005 and then became the head of the division of the same name, is stepping aside to other tasks within the company.
The move was announced in a blogpost from chief executive Larry Page, who also announced that more than 750m Android devices have been activated globally since it was introduced in 2009, and 25 billion apps downloaded from the Google Play store.
Now Page suggests that Rubin will be called on to power some of the "moonshots" - extravagant bets on the future - that the company is trying to find.
"Having exceeded even the crazy ambitious goals we dreamed of for Android — and with a really strong leadership team in place — Andy's decided it's time to hand over the reins and start a new chapter at Google," Page wrote. "Andy, more moonshots please!"
Rubin is a former Apple staffer who left that company in 1992 and went on to set up two successful mobile companies - Danger and Android. Rubin left the former before it was sold to Microsoft, while he headed the latter to a sale to the search giant's co-founders Page and Sergey Brin - who bought Android without telling Eric Schmidt, then the chief executive.
Rubin will be replaced at the head of the Android team by Sundar Pichar, who formerly worked on the Chrome browser, which is now competing with Microsoft's Internet Explorer for the title of the most widely-used browser in the world, despite only launching in 2008.
While the figure for activations makes Android by far the largest mobile platform, well ahead of Apple, whose cumulative total of iPhones, iPads and iPod Touches is close to 500m, the figure for app downloads leaves Google Play still behind Apple, which boasts 40bn downloads from its App Store since it opened in 2008.