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> No wonder the most successful Google products, other than search, have been acquisitions of startups not internal products: YouTube, Android, DoubleClick, Key

> No wonder the most successful Google products, other than search, have been acquisitions of startups not internal products: YouTube, Android, DoubleClick, Keyhole (Google Maps), Waze were started and run by entrepreneurs. What about Gmail and Chrome?

rorykoehler 9y ago
Neither Gmail or Chrome were exceptionally innovative ideas. More iterative technical executions which Google are exceptionally good at imo.
- jogjayr 9y ago
  You're moving the goalposts. The blog post just spoke about "most successful products". And "innovative" is subjective. Moreover there was nothing like Gmail at the time it debuted (AJAX, huge storage, powerful search). Chrome was technically very innovative and also popularized UI things that have become standard - tabs at the top, omnibar.
  - AmericanChopper 9y ago
    Maybe I’m just misremembering, but I’m pretty sure Gmail had much better spam detection than anything else when it launched. Back when it was in beta, that was one of the main features I remember talking about when I ditched Hotmail.
  - Rexxar 9y ago
    You're moving the goalposts too in your first comment: The original article never say there wasn't any very successful and innovative internally developed products. Arguably, YouTube, Android, Maps and Double Clicks have much more impressive market shares and revenue impact than Chrome and Gmail.
  - temporalparts 9y ago
    Regardless of how innovative Gmail and Chrome were (and I agree they were), more of Google's "innovative" products are a result of acquisition. This supports the article's hypothesis that Google's internal product innovation is not as great. Some examples of failed innovation at Google are Wave, Allo, Chat, Plus, etc. Having worked at Google, I can count way more product failures than successes that originated internally.
    - jogjayr 9y ago
      But in the real world too, way more companies fail than succeed. It would be weird if internally developed products didn't also fail a lot. Some of the successful acquisitions (YouTube, Waze) were made at a time when they were already popular and had traction. YouTube wasn't the only video sharing site around at the time (there was even Google Video[1]) but it was obviously the most well-liked. 1. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Google_Video https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Google_Video
- adtac 9y ago
  When it was released, Gmail was on a class of its own. It was free, fast, and had ~1+ GB of storage (and it was increasing every second!). I know that you might think offering more storage for the same product is not innovative, but here's the thing: Yahoo (pretty much the largest competitor at that time) offered an email service with 4 MB of storage. 4 MB.
  - rorykoehler 9y ago
    Gmail was clearly better than any other offering and in most ways still is but it wasn’t paradigm shifting like YouTube.

rorykoehler 9y ago

Neither Gmail or Chrome were exceptionally innovative ideas. More iterative technical executions which Google are exceptionally good at imo.

jogjayr 9y ago
You're moving the goalposts. The blog post just spoke about "most successful products". And "innovative" is subjective. Moreover there was nothing like Gmail at the time it debuted (AJAX, huge storage, powerful search). Chrome was technically very innovative and also popularized UI things that have become standard - tabs at the top, omnibar.
- AmericanChopper 9y ago
  Maybe I’m just misremembering, but I’m pretty sure Gmail had much better spam detection than anything else when it launched. Back when it was in beta, that was one of the main features I remember talking about when I ditched Hotmail.
- Rexxar 9y ago
  You're moving the goalposts too in your first comment: The original article never say there wasn't any very successful and innovative internally developed products. Arguably, YouTube, Android, Maps and Double Clicks have much more impressive market shares and revenue impact than Chrome and Gmail.
- temporalparts 9y ago
  Regardless of how innovative Gmail and Chrome were (and I agree they were), more of Google's "innovative" products are a result of acquisition. This supports the article's hypothesis that Google's internal product innovation is not as great. Some examples of failed innovation at Google are Wave, Allo, Chat, Plus, etc. Having worked at Google, I can count way more product failures than successes that originated internally.
  - jogjayr 9y ago
    But in the real world too, way more companies fail than succeed. It would be weird if internally developed products didn't also fail a lot. Some of the successful acquisitions (YouTube, Waze) were made at a time when they were already popular and had traction. YouTube wasn't the only video sharing site around at the time (there was even Google Video[1]) but it was obviously the most well-liked. 1. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Google_Video https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Google_Video
adtac 9y ago
When it was released, Gmail was on a class of its own. It was free, fast, and had ~1+ GB of storage (and it was increasing every second!). I know that you might think offering more storage for the same product is not innovative, but here's the thing: Yahoo (pretty much the largest competitor at that time) offered an email service with 4 MB of storage. 4 MB.
- rorykoehler 9y ago
  Gmail was clearly better than any other offering and in most ways still is but it wasn’t paradigm shifting like YouTube.