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Kudos to Google for understanding this and cutting their losses (relatively) early. I remember reading about their effort to cut down on useless products and fo

by zavulon 16y ago

Kudos to Google for understanding this and cutting their losses (relatively) early. I remember reading about their effort to cut down on useless products and focusing on the core search/AdWords/Gmail/etc, this is the effect of that. I really hope Buzz is next.

mkramlich 16y ago
The complement of Release Early/Often is probably Kill Early/Often. EDIT: spelling fixed, thanks!
- thisisfmu 16y ago
  I think you wanted to say "complement".
- pjscott 16y ago
  Peter Norvig has confirmed this, and says that the great majority of Google's projects die before anybody even hears about them. This lets them try things out cheaper, so the ideas they do invest a lot of time and money into will have a higher probability of success. http://www.slate.com/blogs/blogs/thewrongstuff/archive/2010/08/03/error-message-google-research-director-peter-norvig-on-being-wrong.aspx http://www.slate.com/blogs/blogs/thewrongstuff/archive/2010/...
- frossie 16y ago
  You know what the complement of Kill Early/Often is? It's me never letting my shop use a new Google product ever again. People invest time in adopting these technologies. Sure, with a little startup you take into account the fact that they might not be able to survive, but with Google you think hey, okay, let's use this thing. And you start developing your process around it. And then you get burned when it gets dropped with "Oh well we lost interest, okay we love you, bye bye!". So today, my guys would have been better off sticking with their lousy wiki that having switched to Wave (despite the fact that they liked it and felt it increased their productivity - personally, I never warmed up to it). Fool me once...
  - swombat 16y ago
    Yep, same here. I gave a friggen' talk about Wave at a TechCrunch event. I used it. I wrote an article about it. Inc.com wrote a "personal viewpoint" column where they presented me as a Wave supporter. Google just lost all credibility with me as an early adopter. From now on, I'll wait 2 years before I start supporting a new Google product, since they apparently have no staying power.
    - elblanco 16y ago
      Too bad they'll never let something last 2-years.
    - frossie 16y ago
      Imagine how these guys feel: http://completewaveguide.com/ http://completewaveguide.com/
  - mkramlich 16y ago
    The risk of that happening was obvious to me and probably others as well. Heck, whenever you have a dependency on some external service there's a risk that service or provider could go away. Provide the service yourself, or scratch that itch another way, and you'll be immune to that risk. They didn't force you to use Wave, and in fact they were nice enough to let you use it for free, so I don't see what grounds you have to complain about it going away.
    - frossie 16y ago
      they were nice enough to let you use it for free They didn't give me the option to pay for it to keep it though, did they. It's not the case that google (or any other tech company out there) gains nothing by "letting people use things for free". They gain the possibility of creating/cornering a niche, they get a bunch of advocates that help them spread their brand (see swombat's comment), they get an army of unpaid beta-testers, they can sell market dominance to their advertisers, etc etc. But, if they keep releasing and dropping products, they will lose those things. That is their call, and they are free to make it - I just wanted to point out one consequence. The plus side for the HN populace is that people like me are more than happy to pay a specialist shop for the chance that it will stick around and develop its product. This is why my photos are on smugmug and not picassa, why my notes are in evernote and not google notebook (another release-and-drop product), why my to-do list is in toodledo and not google tasks, etc etc. Frankly if Google went poof tomorrow, the only thing I would really cry over would be google reader. I am actually very sad it has come to this.
edanm 16y ago
Disagree entirely. Mainly cause I'm a very happy Wave user, and I think it absolutely has a place. It's just not the place Google envisioned at first (it's also not the same product they pitched at first). This is, imo, a failure to Pivot. They have a working tool that, by their own admission, has many users. Why not capitalize on this fact, and start selling the product to the people it is useful for? I'm guessing it's just because Google likes huge, spectacular products over smaller, but still quite successful alternatives.
nl 16y ago
I like the fail fast strategy too. But Buzz is great! What don't you like about it?
SkyMarshal 16y ago
I think they're killing it too quickly. It's not like it was a resounding failure. Those who have adapted it and taken the time to really learn and use it swear by it, which strongly implies there is opportunity for it. It's not so much a product failure as a launch or marketing failure. Pandora.com, for example, had similar problems getting initial traction, but stuck it out long enough to get over the hump (thanks in large part to iOS and Android), and are now one of the hot 'new' things. Sometimes I think you can kill promising products too quickly in an attempt to stick with 'fail early/fail often'.
- gaiusparx 16y ago
  Feel the same about killing it too soon. But then Google is Google and probably judge success in adoption rate base on the results with Gmail and Chrome. My guess is there is an up coming project (Google Me?) that shares some similarity with Wave but is targeting the friends&family group rather than workgroup. They probably will not outsource Wave as some of its tech will find its way to this upcoming project.

by zavulon 16y ago

mkramlich 16y ago

The complement of Release Early/Often is probably Kill Early/Often. EDIT: spelling fixed, thanks!

thisisfmu 16y ago
I think you wanted to say "complement".
pjscott 16y ago
Peter Norvig has confirmed this, and says that the great majority of Google's projects die before anybody even hears about them. This lets them try things out cheaper, so the ideas they do invest a lot of time and money into will have a higher probability of success. http://www.slate.com/blogs/blogs/thewrongstuff/archive/2010/08/03/error-message-google-research-director-peter-norvig-on-being-wrong.aspx http://www.slate.com/blogs/blogs/thewrongstuff/archive/2010/...
frossie 16y ago
You know what the complement of Kill Early/Often is? It's me never letting my shop use a new Google product ever again. People invest time in adopting these technologies. Sure, with a little startup you take into account the fact that they might not be able to survive, but with Google you think hey, okay, let's use this thing. And you start developing your process around it. And then you get burned when it gets dropped with "Oh well we lost interest, okay we love you, bye bye!". So today, my guys would have been better off sticking with their lousy wiki that having switched to Wave (despite the fact that they liked it and felt it increased their productivity - personally, I never warmed up to it). Fool me once...
- swombat 16y ago
  Yep, same here. I gave a friggen' talk about Wave at a TechCrunch event. I used it. I wrote an article about it. Inc.com wrote a "personal viewpoint" column where they presented me as a Wave supporter. Google just lost all credibility with me as an early adopter. From now on, I'll wait 2 years before I start supporting a new Google product, since they apparently have no staying power.
  - elblanco 16y ago
    Too bad they'll never let something last 2-years.
  - frossie 16y ago
    Imagine how these guys feel: http://completewaveguide.com/ http://completewaveguide.com/
- mkramlich 16y ago
  The risk of that happening was obvious to me and probably others as well. Heck, whenever you have a dependency on some external service there's a risk that service or provider could go away. Provide the service yourself, or scratch that itch another way, and you'll be immune to that risk. They didn't force you to use Wave, and in fact they were nice enough to let you use it for free, so I don't see what grounds you have to complain about it going away.
  - frossie 16y ago
    they were nice enough to let you use it for free They didn't give me the option to pay for it to keep it though, did they. It's not the case that google (or any other tech company out there) gains nothing by "letting people use things for free". They gain the possibility of creating/cornering a niche, they get a bunch of advocates that help them spread their brand (see swombat's comment), they get an army of unpaid beta-testers, they can sell market dominance to their advertisers, etc etc. But, if they keep releasing and dropping products, they will lose those things. That is their call, and they are free to make it - I just wanted to point out one consequence. The plus side for the HN populace is that people like me are more than happy to pay a specialist shop for the chance that it will stick around and develop its product. This is why my photos are on smugmug and not picassa, why my notes are in evernote and not google notebook (another release-and-drop product), why my to-do list is in toodledo and not google tasks, etc etc. Frankly if Google went poof tomorrow, the only thing I would really cry over would be google reader. I am actually very sad it has come to this.

edanm 16y ago

Disagree entirely. Mainly cause I'm a very happy Wave user, and I think it absolutely has a place. It's just not the place Google envisioned at first (it's also not the same product they pitched at first). This is, imo, a failure to Pivot. They have a working tool that, by their own admission, has many users. Why not capitalize on this fact, and start selling the product to the people it is useful for? I'm guessing it's just because Google likes huge, spectacular products over smaller, but still quite successful alternatives.

nl 16y ago

I like the fail fast strategy too. But Buzz is great! What don't you like about it?

SkyMarshal 16y ago

I think they're killing it too quickly. It's not like it was a resounding failure. Those who have adapted it and taken the time to really learn and use it swear by it, which strongly implies there is opportunity for it. It's not so much a product failure as a launch or marketing failure. Pandora.com, for example, had similar problems getting initial traction, but stuck it out long enough to get over the hump (thanks in large part to iOS and Android), and are now one of the hot 'new' things. Sometimes I think you can kill promising products too quickly in an attempt to stick with 'fail early/fail often'.

gaiusparx 16y ago
Feel the same about killing it too soon. But then Google is Google and probably judge success in adoption rate base on the results with Gmail and Chrome. My guess is there is an up coming project (Google Me?) that shares some similarity with Wave but is targeting the friends&family group rather than workgroup. They probably will not outsource Wave as some of its tech will find its way to this upcoming project.