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Crazy idea: instead of shutting them down, they should have sold them off to companies who could run and grow them. Maybe not for $Bs but for $Ms.
by vram22 8y ago
Crazy idea: instead of shutting them down, they should have sold them off to companies who could run and grow them. Maybe not for $Bs but for $Ms.
- ericabiz 8y agoThe problem, as I understand it from talking to Google employees, is twofold: 1) Many of these products rely on internal infrastructure and/or hosting that isn't readily available outside of Google. (They're basically built on a sort of internal Google "cloud" that has access to code not available outside Google.) 2) It would cost more money than the product reasonably makes to both move the product off the Google infrastructure/codebase AND find a team willing to continue to develop it. Remember, most of these products didn't really make any money; they were internal projects that released externally and had fan clubs.
- vram22 8y agoInteresting, thanks for explaining. Not sure, but there seems to be a bit of a contradiction between your point 2) and the last sentence of your comment.
- qbaqbaqba 8y agoWhy, to grow a competition? Also imagine how a manager calling for sale of a unprofitable product would like if someone else made that project profitable.
- vram22 8y agoWell, if they're not making enough profits off it (for Google scale), they could sell it off to some much smaller company. (They could avoid selling it to a rival of their size, like FB etc.). A much smaller company like that would hardly be likely to become a significant competitor to Google, except it they did many such acquisitions. Your point about manager not liking it is somewhat valid though, but even there, the manager who organized the sale could get the credit for bringing in some $Ms to the company :) But as I said, just a crazy idea ...