Palm Executive Jumping Ship? (UPDATED – He’s going to Twitter)

Another day, another…I dunno whatcha call it. Today Palm released some info to the SEC that said that Michael Abbott will be leaving Palm in a week or so. Who is Michael Abbott? Well, according to Palm’s website:

Michael leads the application platform and services development for the company’s next-generation Palm webOS platform. He has extensive experience in building technically challenging web-based applications and services.

Yup…pretty important. He has been instrumental in webOS, the Mojo SDK, and Ares.

While we wish him the best of luck in his future endeavors it does make you wonder what is going on behind the doors of Palm. Did he lose faith in the company? Did he not want to work for the Chinese? Did he just win the lottery and is going to buy an island? No one knows and realistically no one probably ever will.

According to Engadget, the filings show that a lot of executives are being given some serious stock. According to them, this is relatively common for companies about to go through an acquisition so that the brains of a company don’t jump ship before the ink is dry. I am no financial person…sounds good to me.

Is this a nail in the coffin? I don’t think so. If you talk to the employees, they are still as bullish as ever. Heck, Lisa Brewster (aka @Adora) just got a custom license plate that says “App Cat” on it. Pretty sure you wouldn’t do that if you were afraid your job was gonna disappear in the next few weeks or months.

Something big is happening, and I am pretty sure it isn’t that Palm is gonna throw in the towel. We will just have to wait and see.

Update - TechCrunch is reporting that Mr. Abbott is leaving Palm to become the head of engineering over at a little company called Twitter. His position will apparently be pretty high up there, too. See? Someone leaving doesn’t always mean that the ship is sinking…sometimes it is just a matter of timing and opportunities.  His replacement is a rumor at this point, but some speculate that it could be Avie Tevanian from Apple.  Only time will tell.  Here’s hoping April 24th brings good things…