In the last few weeks, after HP snapped up Palm, we’ve seen some worrying signs from the company.

Last month Matias Duarte left Palm. Apparently to go and work for Google. Who are not just a rival handset maker. Apart from Apple, Google with its Android smartphone ecosystem is the other major smartphone player in the world. Period. Not only that, but he went to work as a lead in their Android User Experience Department. Not an insignificant role!

HP’s reaction? They didn’t even issue a statement about the reasons behind the main architect of Palm’s webOS operating system apparently fleeing the company.

One can only read into that turn of events that HP didn’t see it coming, or that even if they did they perhaps either didn’t care or couldn’t spin it in any positive way. So said nothing.

In the first couple of days of this month, HP’s CEO issued the rather worrying and myopic statement that his company “didn’t buy Palm to be in the smartphone business”. He went on to try and qualify this sound-byte. But his explanation didn’t make things much better either.

A few scant hours later a rather rushed PR statement from HP tried to further clarify the CEO’s original statement, and to smooth ruffled features of HP’s shareholders.

Today we are hearing news that Rich Dellinger, another key webOS engineer, and a former Apple employee has also left Palm to return to Apple.

HP will obviously have the technology of webOS, as it stands, frozen in time to use as they see fit moving forward. And they’ll also reap the benefit of Palm’s patent portfolio.

But other than that it seems that Palm is still slowly disintegrating. Even after being bought out in what seemed at first like a rescue bid. It really would have been much better for Palm if they had been snapped up by Lenovo or HTC, other rumored suitors.

It seems that we are witnessing a rather sad end to a once truly innovative company.

Do you think its all over for Palm? Will we ever see any fruit from HP’s acquisition? Let us know your thoughts in the comments.