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Does this mean that running high-risk project inside Google started to damage the reputation of Google? Many (most) of the moonshot projects failed (which is no

Does this mean that running high-risk project inside Google started to damage the reputation of Google? Many (most) of the moonshot projects failed (which is normal), and I have the feeling that these events had a somewhat bad fallout on the image of the whole company (questioning its invicibility to some extent, mostly in the eyes of the press).

Oletros 11y ago
Is there a list of moonshots failed?
- coldtea 11y ago
  Wave, Plus, Glasses at least. If we are to include less ambitious stuff, Google Video, Orkut, Chromebooks (never went far), Reader, Google Code, Dart, nothing much came out of Morotola, etc. And let's see were those "self driving cars" will go, market-wise...
  - 10098 11y ago
    Aren't Chromebooks the best selling laptop on amazon or something?
    - akhilcacharya 11y ago
      They are. They're really well used in the education sector now too, for good reason.
    - coldtea 11y ago
      Yes, they sell decently, but do no represent any profit for Google (which gives the OS for free). It's around 5-6 million units sold anually, but, as Google themselves said, Google don't make any money of off them. Samsung, Acer, etc, who produce the units do, but again, in total it represents a tiny slither of laptop profits due to the small margins. Most Chromebooks (70%) go to the education market as cheapo laptops.
      - noelsusman 11y ago
        If direct profit generation is the measure of failure for Google then they've failed at basically everything except for advertising.
        gozo 11y ago
        Yes? They suffer from the gulf state problem where they make so much money from one thing that nothing else will ever be important enough to really be successful.
        coldtea 11y ago
        Even taking indirect advertising profit into question, they've failed at basically everything. E.g. with all the billions developing Android, buying Motorola etc, they still make the large majority of mobile ad money on iOS devices!
      - jaredsohn 11y ago
        I would imagine that Google indirectly profits by having more users using Google as their default search engine and by encouraging the world to rely more on the web. Edit: Also, in the past Google would pay Firefox to have its users use Google as the default search engine and Google gets the equivalent of this for free with each Chromebook sold.
      - bduerst 11y ago
        Thankfully revenue streams are more complex than just, "Did we make more money than it cost to produce this unit sold?" in a vacuum. It's 2015 and companies compete for user timeshare, not dollars.
  - Oletros 11y ago
    None of them are moonshots, I thought that the moonshot part is the one under the X Labs Umbrella Dart and Chromebooks failures? Since when
    - coldtea 11y ago
      Since Dart never went anywhere adoption-wise, and even abandoned plans for its own VM in browsers (not to mention its purpose obsoleted by the announcement of WebAssembly -- since devs will be able to use ports of much more established languages for web programming). And since Google-made Chromebooks never sold well, and those by third parties (Acer, Samsung, etc) don't make much money for their manufacturers and no money at all for Google, and all constrained to the niche educational market (schools buying them for their students).
      - munificent 11y ago
        > since devs will be able to use ports of much more established languages for web programming Sure, they'll be able to use any language they like, as long as it's C or C++. :) There is currently no story for using any high level language (read: language that uses GC) like Ruby or Python as a web language by way of WebAssembly.
        dragonwriter 11y ago
        If you can use C or C++, why could you not use interpreted languages (including those with GC) whose implementation is in C or C++?
        munificent 11y ago
        GC and runtime. A modern GC is a large, complex beast. Python, Ruby, Lua, etc. all have their own implementations of them, and those implementations are specific to the semantics of those languages. (For example, Python's early finalizers. Ruby's FFI, etc.) That's a big blob of code for you to push down the wire with your application every time the user hits your site. Also, that GC doesn't know how to play nice with the browser's own GC. If you have an event handler that has a reference to some Ruby object that in turn has a reference to some DOM node, neither GC can trace through that path and tell when those objects can be collected. That means you get memory leaks. On top of that, the language implementation itself is large. The Python executable on my machine is 2 MB. Do you want to add another 2 MB to your app? Is Python enough better than JS to justify forcing all of your users on their crappy mobile networks to download that before any interactivity begins on your page? What about when you start using the additional 45 MB of standard library that comes with Python? Also, how do you make those standard libraries work in a browser? Who is going to rewrite them all to stop using the native OS libraries they currently use and instead rely on APIs that are available in JS? That's not to say this is an insurmountable problem. But my belief is that it's a big enough headache to outweigh the benefits you would get from writing your app in another higher level language. Now, if your language can compile to JavaScript and has a decently small runtime library, that's a different story. At that point, you're back to only one GC and relatively little overhead for your language's semantics and core libraries. It means you don't have to worry about a large existing standard library that #includes everything under the sun. This is why I think CoffeeScript, ClojureScript, Dart, etc. are feasible. But I don't think anyone will be writing web apps in Ruby or Python anytime soon. Languages that look syntactically similar to them (Opal, Red, Pyjamas, Brython, etc.), sure. But the real deal where you can have some app that does, I don't know, "import requests" and have it actually work in a shippably-sized web app? I think that's going to be a much harder path. It's a great goal for the WebAssembly folks to work towards, but it's an aspirational goal.
  - icebraining 11y ago
    Reader was the top web application in its market for almost a decade. I'd like to have that kind of failure.
    - coldtea 11y ago
      You can achieve it very easily if you don't have profits. E.g. you can open a web application selling $10 for $5 today and I guarantee you it's gonna be a huge success.
    - eastbayjake 11y ago
      Maybe the only Google "failure" to have people protest its closure: http://www.tbd.com/blogs/tbd-arts/2011/10/occupy-google-reader-a-report-from-the-protest-s-front-lines--13343.html http://www.tbd.com/blogs/tbd-arts/2011/10/occupy-google-read...
  - notatoad 11y ago
    wave and plus hardly count as moonshots. they're about as boring as projects get.
  - tapsboy 11y ago
    Google Video was merged into Youtube Orkut was wildly successful in Brazil and India, until they stopped building it for Buzz and Plus Reader was hugely successful, which is why the outcry on its closing Chromebooks are doing great, atleast on Amazon, the world's biggest retailer. Dart pivoted into a compile-to-JS language, but is still alive Motorola streamlined it's product lineup under Google and is doing fairly okay for Lenovo Calling above items as failure is inaccurate. None of them were moonshots btw.
    - dragonwriter 11y ago
      > Dart pivoted into a compile-to-JS language, but is still alive Dart started as a compile-to-JS language for web use with a VM for server use, with an browser-hosted VM for development with a long-term plan that compile-to-JS might not be necessary on the web. And its still a compile-to-JS language for web use with a VM for server use, with an browser-hosted VM for development use.
    - gress 11y ago
      Google Video, and Orkut, were complete failures and no longer exist. Successful products don't disappear without a trace. If they are closed by management when they otherwise might have succeeded, that is failure. Reader was a failure according to Google itself, which closed it due to supposed lack of interest. Once again, if the decision to close it was an error by your criteria, then they failed. The rest I would agree with.
      - magicalist 11y ago
        Of course if we go back to the original question, Orkut and Reader were hardly "moonshots" in the first place (and Google Video was arguably just a standard project launch).
        gress 11y ago
        Google's own canonical example of a moonshot is Android. By that definition, Orkut and Reader qualify just fine.
  - noelsusman 11y ago
    Chromebooks are pretty popular. The first generation wasn't very good but the more recent ones are selling well. Reader was very popular relative to the size of the RSS reader market. Google bought Motorola for the patent portfolio and sold off the rest, so I'm not sure how that was a failure. Motorola also turned around their mobile division with the Moto X under Google (over 100% increase in mobile sales due to the Moto X and company line of products) I remember Orkut being very popular in Asia for a while.
    - hobs 11y ago
      All of that I wont argue with, except the characterization that reader was a success because Google owned the market. I dont see how G closing down reader could have that count in the success column, especially considering how much bad blood it bred for G (and how little effort it would have likely meant to maintain it.)
    - idlewords 11y ago
      Reader was the living kernel of what could have potentially been a successful Google social network.
    - lkbm 11y ago
      Orkut was heavily used in Brazil (and India, according to Wikipedia).
- Oletros 11y ago
  Wave and Plus were not moonshots It would be a good thing explain why the downvotes
  - josh2600 11y ago
    They were absolutely moonshots. Reforming the entire way we do realtime communications? Reforming the entire way we do social interaction? Total moonshots, they just failed, but if they succeeded they would be billion dollar businesses. BTW, the best result of wave is hackpad, IMHO.
  - rob_lh 11y ago
    They were absolutely pitched as huge ideas that would change everything we know about email and social networks. Bearing the scars of their public failures, Google started calling new projects moonshots to shape perception of the programs as chasing ideas, while preemptively deflecting any criticism of their readiness or desirability to large markets. They are not materially different from moonshots except in presentation.
    - dzhiurgis 11y ago
      What huge ideas? Social network inside a browser was never a new idea, no matter how hard Google was pitching.
      - rob_lh 11y ago
        Circles for different messages to different groups, as well as the universal profile for logging into all your favorite Google services. It's not my fault these were harebrained ideas, but they were presented as revolutionary. The ideas are still arguably revolutionary (Slack delivers where Wave failed) but Google's execution was lacking. Same fundamental issue facing so many of their other programs.
        jacquesm 11y ago
        Hyves in NL had the 'circles' thing before Facebook even existed, let alone before Google went public with G+.
- ocdtrekkie 11y ago
  Search for "The Google Graveyard". Someone made a thing about all the stuff Google killed off.
  - uptown 11y ago
    http://killedgoogleproducts.silk.co/ http://killedgoogleproducts.silk.co/
wvenable 11y ago
Things like the self-driving car don't really fit the Google brand or corporate structure.
dragonwriter 11y ago
> Does this mean that running high-risk project inside Google started to damage the reputation of Google? I don't think it hurt the consumer reputation, and it can't be about the investor reputation, since those things are still inside the entity (Alphabet) that investors will care about (at least, until a way to invest in the new "core" Google directly is offered, which may be part of the long-term plan -- it would explain why they indicated that they will report Google's financials separately within Alphabet's.)
kylemk 11y ago
I think you're right. Google was devolving into a fragmented corporation with no direction or vision. Alphabet helps the Google brand by de-fragmenting it and turning it into the "internet services" arm and putting Google X, Life Sciences, etc etc into their own, protected, sandboxes.

Oletros 11y ago

Is there a list of moonshots failed?

coldtea 11y ago
Wave, Plus, Glasses at least. If we are to include less ambitious stuff, Google Video, Orkut, Chromebooks (never went far), Reader, Google Code, Dart, nothing much came out of Morotola, etc. And let's see were those "self driving cars" will go, market-wise...
- 10098 11y ago
  Aren't Chromebooks the best selling laptop on amazon or something?
  - akhilcacharya 11y ago
    They are. They're really well used in the education sector now too, for good reason.
  - coldtea 11y ago
    Yes, they sell decently, but do no represent any profit for Google (which gives the OS for free). It's around 5-6 million units sold anually, but, as Google themselves said, Google don't make any money of off them. Samsung, Acer, etc, who produce the units do, but again, in total it represents a tiny slither of laptop profits due to the small margins. Most Chromebooks (70%) go to the education market as cheapo laptops.
    - noelsusman 11y ago
      If direct profit generation is the measure of failure for Google then they've failed at basically everything except for advertising.
      - gozo 11y ago
        Yes? They suffer from the gulf state problem where they make so much money from one thing that nothing else will ever be important enough to really be successful.
      - coldtea 11y ago
        Even taking indirect advertising profit into question, they've failed at basically everything. E.g. with all the billions developing Android, buying Motorola etc, they still make the large majority of mobile ad money on iOS devices!
    - jaredsohn 11y ago
      I would imagine that Google indirectly profits by having more users using Google as their default search engine and by encouraging the world to rely more on the web. Edit: Also, in the past Google would pay Firefox to have its users use Google as the default search engine and Google gets the equivalent of this for free with each Chromebook sold.
    - bduerst 11y ago
      Thankfully revenue streams are more complex than just, "Did we make more money than it cost to produce this unit sold?" in a vacuum. It's 2015 and companies compete for user timeshare, not dollars.
- Oletros 11y ago
  None of them are moonshots, I thought that the moonshot part is the one under the X Labs Umbrella Dart and Chromebooks failures? Since when
  - coldtea 11y ago
    Since Dart never went anywhere adoption-wise, and even abandoned plans for its own VM in browsers (not to mention its purpose obsoleted by the announcement of WebAssembly -- since devs will be able to use ports of much more established languages for web programming). And since Google-made Chromebooks never sold well, and those by third parties (Acer, Samsung, etc) don't make much money for their manufacturers and no money at all for Google, and all constrained to the niche educational market (schools buying them for their students).
    - munificent 11y ago
      > since devs will be able to use ports of much more established languages for web programming Sure, they'll be able to use any language they like, as long as it's C or C++. :) There is currently no story for using any high level language (read: language that uses GC) like Ruby or Python as a web language by way of WebAssembly.
      - dragonwriter 11y ago
        If you can use C or C++, why could you not use interpreted languages (including those with GC) whose implementation is in C or C++?
        munificent 11y ago
        GC and runtime. A modern GC is a large, complex beast. Python, Ruby, Lua, etc. all have their own implementations of them, and those implementations are specific to the semantics of those languages. (For example, Python's early finalizers. Ruby's FFI, etc.) That's a big blob of code for you to push down the wire with your application every time the user hits your site. Also, that GC doesn't know how to play nice with the browser's own GC. If you have an event handler that has a reference to some Ruby object that in turn has a reference to some DOM node, neither GC can trace through that path and tell when those objects can be collected. That means you get memory leaks. On top of that, the language implementation itself is large. The Python executable on my machine is 2 MB. Do you want to add another 2 MB to your app? Is Python enough better than JS to justify forcing all of your users on their crappy mobile networks to download that before any interactivity begins on your page? What about when you start using the additional 45 MB of standard library that comes with Python? Also, how do you make those standard libraries work in a browser? Who is going to rewrite them all to stop using the native OS libraries they currently use and instead rely on APIs that are available in JS? That's not to say this is an insurmountable problem. But my belief is that it's a big enough headache to outweigh the benefits you would get from writing your app in another higher level language. Now, if your language can compile to JavaScript and has a decently small runtime library, that's a different story. At that point, you're back to only one GC and relatively little overhead for your language's semantics and core libraries. It means you don't have to worry about a large existing standard library that #includes everything under the sun. This is why I think CoffeeScript, ClojureScript, Dart, etc. are feasible. But I don't think anyone will be writing web apps in Ruby or Python anytime soon. Languages that look syntactically similar to them (Opal, Red, Pyjamas, Brython, etc.), sure. But the real deal where you can have some app that does, I don't know, "import requests" and have it actually work in a shippably-sized web app? I think that's going to be a much harder path. It's a great goal for the WebAssembly folks to work towards, but it's an aspirational goal.
- icebraining 11y ago
  Reader was the top web application in its market for almost a decade. I'd like to have that kind of failure.
  - coldtea 11y ago
    You can achieve it very easily if you don't have profits. E.g. you can open a web application selling $10 for $5 today and I guarantee you it's gonna be a huge success.
  - eastbayjake 11y ago
    Maybe the only Google "failure" to have people protest its closure: http://www.tbd.com/blogs/tbd-arts/2011/10/occupy-google-reader-a-report-from-the-protest-s-front-lines--13343.html http://www.tbd.com/blogs/tbd-arts/2011/10/occupy-google-read...
- notatoad 11y ago
  wave and plus hardly count as moonshots. they're about as boring as projects get.
- tapsboy 11y ago
  Google Video was merged into Youtube Orkut was wildly successful in Brazil and India, until they stopped building it for Buzz and Plus Reader was hugely successful, which is why the outcry on its closing Chromebooks are doing great, atleast on Amazon, the world's biggest retailer. Dart pivoted into a compile-to-JS language, but is still alive Motorola streamlined it's product lineup under Google and is doing fairly okay for Lenovo Calling above items as failure is inaccurate. None of them were moonshots btw.
  - dragonwriter 11y ago
    > Dart pivoted into a compile-to-JS language, but is still alive Dart started as a compile-to-JS language for web use with a VM for server use, with an browser-hosted VM for development with a long-term plan that compile-to-JS might not be necessary on the web. And its still a compile-to-JS language for web use with a VM for server use, with an browser-hosted VM for development use.
  - gress 11y ago
    Google Video, and Orkut, were complete failures and no longer exist. Successful products don't disappear without a trace. If they are closed by management when they otherwise might have succeeded, that is failure. Reader was a failure according to Google itself, which closed it due to supposed lack of interest. Once again, if the decision to close it was an error by your criteria, then they failed. The rest I would agree with.
    - magicalist 11y ago
      Of course if we go back to the original question, Orkut and Reader were hardly "moonshots" in the first place (and Google Video was arguably just a standard project launch).
      - gress 11y ago
        Google's own canonical example of a moonshot is Android. By that definition, Orkut and Reader qualify just fine.
- noelsusman 11y ago
  Chromebooks are pretty popular. The first generation wasn't very good but the more recent ones are selling well. Reader was very popular relative to the size of the RSS reader market. Google bought Motorola for the patent portfolio and sold off the rest, so I'm not sure how that was a failure. Motorola also turned around their mobile division with the Moto X under Google (over 100% increase in mobile sales due to the Moto X and company line of products) I remember Orkut being very popular in Asia for a while.
  - hobs 11y ago
    All of that I wont argue with, except the characterization that reader was a success because Google owned the market. I dont see how G closing down reader could have that count in the success column, especially considering how much bad blood it bred for G (and how little effort it would have likely meant to maintain it.)
  - idlewords 11y ago
    Reader was the living kernel of what could have potentially been a successful Google social network.
  - lkbm 11y ago
    Orkut was heavily used in Brazil (and India, according to Wikipedia).
Oletros 11y ago
Wave and Plus were not moonshots It would be a good thing explain why the downvotes
- josh2600 11y ago
  They were absolutely moonshots. Reforming the entire way we do realtime communications? Reforming the entire way we do social interaction? Total moonshots, they just failed, but if they succeeded they would be billion dollar businesses. BTW, the best result of wave is hackpad, IMHO.
- rob_lh 11y ago
  They were absolutely pitched as huge ideas that would change everything we know about email and social networks. Bearing the scars of their public failures, Google started calling new projects moonshots to shape perception of the programs as chasing ideas, while preemptively deflecting any criticism of their readiness or desirability to large markets. They are not materially different from moonshots except in presentation.
  - dzhiurgis 11y ago
    What huge ideas? Social network inside a browser was never a new idea, no matter how hard Google was pitching.
    - rob_lh 11y ago
      Circles for different messages to different groups, as well as the universal profile for logging into all your favorite Google services. It's not my fault these were harebrained ideas, but they were presented as revolutionary. The ideas are still arguably revolutionary (Slack delivers where Wave failed) but Google's execution was lacking. Same fundamental issue facing so many of their other programs.
      - jacquesm 11y ago
        Hyves in NL had the 'circles' thing before Facebook even existed, let alone before Google went public with G+.
ocdtrekkie 11y ago
Search for "The Google Graveyard". Someone made a thing about all the stuff Google killed off.
- uptown 11y ago
  http://killedgoogleproducts.silk.co/ http://killedgoogleproducts.silk.co/

wvenable 11y ago

Things like the self-driving car don't really fit the Google brand or corporate structure.

dragonwriter 11y ago

> Does this mean that running high-risk project inside Google started to damage the reputation of Google? I don't think it hurt the consumer reputation, and it can't be about the investor reputation, since those things are still inside the entity (Alphabet) that investors will care about (at least, until a way to invest in the new "core" Google directly is offered, which may be part of the long-term plan -- it would explain why they indicated that they will report Google's financials separately within Alphabet's.)

kylemk 11y ago

I think you're right. Google was devolving into a fragmented corporation with no direction or vision. Alphabet helps the Google brand by de-fragmenting it and turning it into the "internet services" arm and putting Google X, Life Sciences, etc etc into their own, protected, sandboxes.