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Google launches and then kills new products so frequently it makes me extremely reluctant to try anything new. Best case the product sucks and I don't care. Wor

Google launches and then kills new products so frequently it makes me extremely reluctant to try anything new. Best case the product sucks and I don't care. Worst case I love it and they shut it down a year later. I'm otherwise a pretty enthusiastic early adopter of most things tech, but when Google is the brand behind it I feel like it's not worth even looking until the thing has become huge otherwise it's just going to get shuttered.

Traster 6y ago
Yup, came here for the "start the stopwatch" comment. Google probably needs to dump the Google brand now. Google is a great search engine and a crappy company. They either need a massive string of successful new product launches with notable examples of where they've refused to dump a product for decades, or they need to dump the brand that they've tarnished.
andromeduck 6y ago
I've always considered getting rid of the Google vs Google Labs distinction was one of the dumbest brand decisions of all time. That it hasn't been brought back in some form really speaks volumes on the level and lack of strategic leadership in the last few years.
m463 6y ago
I wonder why this happens. Is it engineers internally that gather up momentum for a projects, see it to fruition and then folks move to other projects? Or is it the sort of "google waterwheel" that scoops up non-google participants, gets them to create a google account, and in a few years moves on to other corners of the internet? the end result is that google seems to "dabble"
- gumby 6y ago
  I think there are two factors. One is the standard big company political issues thing. Bad products are sustained, good ones killed because the bad one happened to have a manager who couldn't listen or see clearly, and had some political credibility while the good one lacked political strength. This is simply one of the pathologies of big organizations. (even the best large organizations suffer seriously from this problem, and I doubt many would consider google to be particularly well run. They have a huge gusher of money flowing their way even if everybody went home for a week, so have no competitive pressure to improve on that dimension). This interlocks with the second factor. 87% of their revenue comes from one source and that source is very large. So you could start a new project, generate some revenue, but if it isn't on a growth trajectory that would move that 87% down, well, is it really worth investing in? I believe this is why Nest was brought onto Google's balance sheet: it contributes something around a percent or so to google's revenue, which helped push that number down slightly. By contrast, look at Apple which has a (slightly) diversified set of products; they continue to invest in macs and ipads which don't constitute a huge percentage of revenue (though they'd be F200 or F100 businesses were they on their own). Apple is so secretive, even internally, you'd think they were worse run than google but somehow it works. Perhaps that secrecy makes the internal fighting harder as only a small number of people who know each other well end up seeing the big picture? I haven't the faintest idea.
- prepend 6y ago
  I think it’s because ads have really high margins. I expect that none of these products make similar margins so human capital is redirected to earn more. So they probably have some planned investment period with a model to profitability, then miss it and kill it. This is why I worry about GCP because it seems like a lower margin than search ads.

Traster 6y ago

Yup, came here for the "start the stopwatch" comment. Google probably needs to dump the Google brand now. Google is a great search engine and a crappy company. They either need a massive string of successful new product launches with notable examples of where they've refused to dump a product for decades, or they need to dump the brand that they've tarnished.

andromeduck 6y ago

I've always considered getting rid of the Google vs Google Labs distinction was one of the dumbest brand decisions of all time. That it hasn't been brought back in some form really speaks volumes on the level and lack of strategic leadership in the last few years.

m463 6y ago

I wonder why this happens. Is it engineers internally that gather up momentum for a projects, see it to fruition and then folks move to other projects? Or is it the sort of "google waterwheel" that scoops up non-google participants, gets them to create a google account, and in a few years moves on to other corners of the internet? the end result is that google seems to "dabble"

gumby 6y ago
I think there are two factors. One is the standard big company political issues thing. Bad products are sustained, good ones killed because the bad one happened to have a manager who couldn't listen or see clearly, and had some political credibility while the good one lacked political strength. This is simply one of the pathologies of big organizations. (even the best large organizations suffer seriously from this problem, and I doubt many would consider google to be particularly well run. They have a huge gusher of money flowing their way even if everybody went home for a week, so have no competitive pressure to improve on that dimension). This interlocks with the second factor. 87% of their revenue comes from one source and that source is very large. So you could start a new project, generate some revenue, but if it isn't on a growth trajectory that would move that 87% down, well, is it really worth investing in? I believe this is why Nest was brought onto Google's balance sheet: it contributes something around a percent or so to google's revenue, which helped push that number down slightly. By contrast, look at Apple which has a (slightly) diversified set of products; they continue to invest in macs and ipads which don't constitute a huge percentage of revenue (though they'd be F200 or F100 businesses were they on their own). Apple is so secretive, even internally, you'd think they were worse run than google but somehow it works. Perhaps that secrecy makes the internal fighting harder as only a small number of people who know each other well end up seeing the big picture? I haven't the faintest idea.
prepend 6y ago
I think it’s because ads have really high margins. I expect that none of these products make similar margins so human capital is redirected to earn more. So they probably have some planned investment period with a model to profitability, then miss it and kill it. This is why I worry about GCP because it seems like a lower margin than search ads.