4 ms·

Didn’t Google pull it off in the beginning? If I remember correctly, some major successes like Google Earth came out of Google’s famous 20% policy. I’m not sure

Didn’t Google pull it off in the beginning? If I remember correctly, some major successes like Google Earth came out of Google’s famous 20% policy. I’m not sure what changed since then. Maybe it’s not something that scales easily?

psyc 5y ago
Google Earth was acquired. Formerly Keyhole, IIRC.
- oblio 5y ago
  Gmail was an acquisition, Google Maps was an acquisition, Android was an acquisition, Google Docs were an acquisition, I'm actually having a hard time thinking of a major Google project that's not an acquisition except for Google Search and Google Ads (and even there, I think they acquired DoubleClick early on and that boosted their ads business a lot).
  - psyc 5y ago
    All but gmail. That was created in house by Paul Buchheit.
    - oblio 5y ago
      Ah, I thought it was based on an acqui-hire of Oddpost: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Oddpost https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Oddpost
      - jannes 5y ago
        The Wikipedia article says that it was acquired by Yahoo and turned into Yahoo Mail. You may have confused Google with Yahoo?
bryanrasmussen 5y ago
It's true that there were some early notable 20% projects https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/20%25_Project#Notable_projects https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/20%25_Project#Notable_projects