Google confirms Dodgeball departures

A Google spokesman confirmed Tuesday that the founders of mobile social-networking service Dodgeball have quit, and provided a statement.

"Google understands the important role social networking plays in today's mobile eco-system, and we are constantly looking at ways to provide a great user experience in this area," the statement said. "Dodgeball was an early attempt at understanding user needs in this space and we are continuing to evolve our thinking and our offerings. However, we have nothing to announce at this time."

The founders posted a photo on Flickr over the weekend, titled "Me + Alex quit google. (dodgeball forever!!!!)" which shows Dennis Crowley and Alex Rainert pointing their thumbs to the floor and making faces.

"So...Alex and I quit Google on Friday," the entry below the photo says. "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."

Google bought Dodgeball two years ago.