Jeff Huber, the man who has run Google's Mapping and Commerce group for the last decade, has stepped down. In the process, his team is being split in two, and he's moving over to Google X, the search company's skunkworks charged with bringing bleeding-edge technologies – everything from space ladders to driverless cars – to life.

The move comes just a day after Andy Rubin, the senior vice president who spent that last decade at Google running Android, also stepped down to work on covert projects at Google X.

"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 startup environment," a Google spokesperson told Wired in an email. With Huber no longer at the helm, Mapping will now fall under Google's Search division, run by Senior Vice President Alan Eustace. Commerce will roll into Google's Advertising group, run by SVP Susan Wojcicki.

Huber updated his Twitter bio on Thursday, confirming his move to the X team. On Thursday, in his first tweet since Dec. 19, Huber asked what his followers would like to see Google X pursue. "Finishing up my first decade at Google, and excited to begin the next one at Google X. What would you like to see X do next?," he wrote.

Suggestions of tackling hunger, poverty, teleportation, self-driving cars (which Google X is already working on), the health care industry, digital currency, teaching coding to children, and space elevators flooded in. Huber responded with interest to nearly every one, but he didn't reveal his own preference nor what he hopes to achieve as part of the Google X team.

Both Rubin and Huber are executives who have built up a decade of success running massively important teams at Google. Android, under Rubin's direction, has grown into the most popular mobile operating system in the world. Google Maps and Street View – which both started as research projects of Google co-founders Sergey Brin and (current CEO) Larry Page while at Stanford – are the leading mapping technologies on the web, as well as on smartphones and tablets. That growth took place with Huber running the show. As good as Bing Maps, Nokia Maps, MapQuest and other competing mapping platforms are, none come close to offering the level of scale, detail and interaction that Google Maps offers its users.

But now, two of Google's most proven executives, are going into a closed-off secret lab to work on projects in the shadows (Rubin has yet to confirm this, but Page's note announcing Rubin's role change seems to imply as much). There's a chance the two could be working together on Google Glass, part of large and growing bet on Google's part that wearables will be the next great computing platform. We can't help but wonder, however, whether the move to Google X might be more of an exile. Is Google X building a dream team of Google's greatest minds? Or is it a place where vets can tinker away on the margins outside of Page's vision for an increasingly unified Google?

One thing is clear. Page is doing all he can to make sure Google isn't the next Sony – a massive company with walled-off divisions that didn't communicate with each other, and have cost the company its spot as one of the world's most innovative and successful tech firms. Page is building Google into a tightly interwoven ship. He's dumping products that aren't used by massive amounts of people, and he's integrating teams to make sure goals are aligned and money is being made. No longer will Google have multiple competing visions of the future. Page is building one Google with one vision – his.