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Google's promotion and incentive structure is built around launching products. This will launch, putter along for a couple of years and then get shuttered unles

by tspike 8y ago

Google's promotion and incentive structure is built around launching products. This will launch, putter along for a couple of years and then get shuttered unless it's a surprise success.

lsiebert 8y ago
Sure, though technology or ideas from products that aren't successful is often incorporated in future projects. Honestly there's a really good blog post/article waiting to be written grouping and classifying shuttered google projects into groups based on purposes, because for a lot of them, they aren't created to be successes or make money, but for other business reasons, legal precedents, creating competition or disrupting a particular business segment, etc.
- throw_away 8y ago
  Whether the motivation for their behavior is because of a promotion-based incentive structure or some sort of deep 3d chess corporate strategy, neither makes me excited to use their products when released. Fool me once... I'll wait until my mom tells me about it.
fooey 8y ago
If they make it work, Chromebooks just magically turned into gaming machines.
- remir 8y ago
  Chromecast, too.
yash1th 8y ago
One of the services I really liked is Google’s url shortening. I wonder why they discontinued it?
- jankeymeulen 8y ago
  Without knowing any details (and too lazy too look it up) it might be just the case that this was built on some old framework/technology that now has been deprecated and the effort to bring it up to date was not worth it.
munificent 8y ago
> This will launch, putter along for a couple of years and then get shuttered unless it's a surprise success. You say that like it's a bad thing, but isn't that effectively how Silicon Valley as a whole operates? Most startups putter along for a few years before running out of money and getting shuttered. A couple become surprise successes and take off. Google is effectively just a single corporation acting like a hive of startups.

by tspike 8y ago

Google's promotion and incentive structure is built around launching products. This will launch, putter along for a couple of years and then get shuttered unless it's a surprise success.

lsiebert 8y ago

Sure, though technology or ideas from products that aren't successful is often incorporated in future projects. Honestly there's a really good blog post/article waiting to be written grouping and classifying shuttered google projects into groups based on purposes, because for a lot of them, they aren't created to be successes or make money, but for other business reasons, legal precedents, creating competition or disrupting a particular business segment, etc.

throw_away 8y ago
Whether the motivation for their behavior is because of a promotion-based incentive structure or some sort of deep 3d chess corporate strategy, neither makes me excited to use their products when released. Fool me once... I'll wait until my mom tells me about it.

fooey 8y ago

If they make it work, Chromebooks just magically turned into gaming machines.

remir 8y ago
Chromecast, too.

yash1th 8y ago

One of the services I really liked is Google’s url shortening. I wonder why they discontinued it?

jankeymeulen 8y ago
Without knowing any details (and too lazy too look it up) it might be just the case that this was built on some old framework/technology that now has been deprecated and the effort to bring it up to date was not worth it.

munificent 8y ago

> This will launch, putter along for a couple of years and then get shuttered unless it's a surprise success. You say that like it's a bad thing, but isn't that effectively how Silicon Valley as a whole operates? Most startups putter along for a few years before running out of money and getting shuttered. A couple become surprise successes and take off. Google is effectively just a single corporation acting like a hive of startups.