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> Survival bias. Look it up I think this list is a good argument against survival bias. Google had a fantastic product, which really worked. They tested on a

> Survival bias. Look it up I think this list is a good argument against survival bias. Google had a fantastic product, which really worked. They tested on a small number of users and found it to be fantastic. They scaled that. There is a clear logical explanation for why they succeeded. You could say "well, they may have failed at scaling". How hard is it to scale from where they already were, with such a good product? Not very hard, I'd say. Let's assume your argument holds, and that many other groups had the same idea and didn't succeed. So they must have gotten at least as far as Google in getting their product done and tested by a decent sized group of users. So maybe 100s or 1000s of people were using their product on a daily basis. In which case, why don't we hear about those products? I think you can treat survival bias seriously when there is a large element of luck involved. In the Google story, I don't see much luck. I see a really good idea that worked and was then brought to market.

hasenj 9y ago
> Google had a fantastic product, which really worked. Lots of people think they have fantastic products. Lots of products take off without being fantastic. Lots of products can be really fantastic but never manage to take off.
- randomsearch 9y ago
  > Lots of people think they have fantastic products. Google didn't think they had a fantastic product. They _had_ one, it was pretty self-evident that the search engine was a great deal better than any competitor, and they had empirical evidence that many other people agreed (as they were using the engine). > Lots of products take off without being fantastic. I'm not sure that's true. I can't think of any examples of terrible products that have been hugely successful. I can think of examples of products that _became_ terrible after success or monopoly had been achieved. > Lots of products can be really fantastic but never manage to take off. It took me less than a minute using Google to see that it would conquer the world. Same for my colleagues. I think really you mean "good". _Fantastic_ products are by definition super-useful, popular, have instant appeal.

hasenj 9y ago

> Google had a fantastic product, which really worked. Lots of people think they have fantastic products. Lots of products take off without being fantastic. Lots of products can be really fantastic but never manage to take off.

randomsearch 9y ago
> Lots of people think they have fantastic products. Google didn't think they had a fantastic product. They _had_ one, it was pretty self-evident that the search engine was a great deal better than any competitor, and they had empirical evidence that many other people agreed (as they were using the engine). > Lots of products take off without being fantastic. I'm not sure that's true. I can't think of any examples of terrible products that have been hugely successful. I can think of examples of products that _became_ terrible after success or monopoly had been achieved. > Lots of products can be really fantastic but never manage to take off. It took me less than a minute using Google to see that it would conquer the world. Same for my colleagues. I think really you mean "good". _Fantastic_ products are by definition super-useful, popular, have instant appeal.