R.J. Pittman, a prominent product manager at Google, has left the company to join Apple, reports “TechCrunch” (http://techcrunch.com/2010/03/14/google-product-manager-rj-pittman-defects-to-apple/).

At Google, he has served as director of product management for Google Labs and Google Search. It’s not clear what he’ll be doing at Apple.

Before Google, Pittman was co-founder and CEO of Groxis, a web search company; a managing partner of Venture Factory Partners, a technology venture capital and venture management firm; co-founder and CEO of Digital Courier Technologies, an ecommerce company; vice president of technology at Paradigm Systems Corp., a global IT systems and strategy consulting firm; and vice president of technology for Metric, a software start-up. He has a MS in Engineering-Economic Systems from Standford University.