Dodgeball Founders Crowley & Rainert Quit Google In Frustration

Dennis Crowley, cofounder of Dodgeball, which was acquired by Google in May 2005, has announced his resignation and that of Dodgeball’s other cofounder Alex Rainert:

So…. Alex and I quit Google on Friday.

It’s no real secret that Google wasn’t supporting dodgeball the way we expected. The whole experience was incredibly frustrating for us – especially as we couldn’t convince them that dodgeball was worth engineering resources, leaving us to watch as other startups got to innovate in the mobile + social space. And while it was a tough decision (and really disappointing) to walk away from dodgeball, I’m actually looking forward to getting to work on other projects again.

Crowley explains what is next:

So, what’s next? Starting today (Monday!) I’m joining the kids at area/code who are knee-deep in building all sorts of Big Games (remember PacManhattan? ConQwest?). Alex is moving on to IconNicholson where he took a gig as a Creative Strategist focusing on mobile and emerging technologies. (And sorry, but I don’t know what Google has planned for dodgeball going forward.)

More coverage at Techmeme.

(Some images used under license from Shutterstock.com.)