Matt Cutts, who was once believed to be the mysterious GoogleGuy on Webmaster World forums and later became the main conduit of information to webmasters about Google search updates, has resigned from Google. For the last few years Cutts has been on leave from Google and has more recently worked for the US Digital Service. He announced on his blog that he had resigned from Google as of December 31, 2016:

When I joined the US Digital Service, I only planned to stay for three months. That quickly turned into six months after I saw the impact of the USDS. In the last month, I made a big decision. On December 31, 2016, I resigned from Google. I’m currently serving as director of engineering for the USDS. Mikey Dickerson, the first administrator of the USDS, is a political appointee, so he’ll step down on Inauguration Day. When that happens, I’ll serve as acting administrator of the USDS. The work that the USDS does is critical to the American people, and I’m honored to continue that tradition.

The USDS played a pivotal role in rescuing the Obamacare website healthcare.gov that was beset by huge cost overruns while still not working. Cutts also notes that “the US Digital Service has helped veterans get their health benefits, brought bug bounties to the federal government, and helped the IRS protect taxpayer info.” He posted this video to illustrate the important work and accomplishments of USDS:

“Working for the government doesn’t pay as well as a big company in Silicon Valley,” writes Cutts. “We don’t get any free lunches. Many days are incredibly frustrating. All I can tell you is that the work is deeply important and inspiring, and you have a chance to work on things that genuinely make peoples’ lives better. A friend who started working in this space several years ago told me “These last five years have been the hardest and worst and best and most rewarding I think I will ever have.””

For those in the search engine space Cutts is very familiar, having attended many Pubcon, SearchEngineStrategies and SearchEngineLand conferences. WebProNews has video interviewed Cutts and written about things he has said hundreds of many times over the years while covering the search industry and Google. Here are a few of our WebProNews exclusive video interviews with Matt Cutts:

PubCon: Exclusive Interview With Matt Cutts (2006)

PubCon Las Vegas 2007: Matt Cutts of Google and Vanessa Fox (2007)

WPN Exclusive: Matt Cutts Apologizes on Behalf of Google’s Penalty against Google Japan (2009)

Breaking News: Matt Cutts Explains “Canonical Tag” from Google, Yahoo, Microsoft (2009)

Matt Cutts on Changes at Google (2008)