4 ms·
This "more wood behind fewer arrows" approach sounds great to me as long as they keep trying new things. The only thing that concerns me about the approach is
by joebadmo 15y ago
This "more wood behind fewer arrows" approach sounds great to me as long as they keep trying new things.
The only thing that concerns me about the approach is along the lines of what Doug Bowman said when he quit[0]: relying on data too much can blind you to what cannot be represented in data. Or, maybe, as Steve Jobs said: "A lot of times, people don't know what they want until you show it to them."[1]
I'm optimistic that Larry Page is finding a way that comes from conviction in combination with data.
[0]: http://stopdesign.com/archive/2009/03/20/goodbye-google.html http://stopdesign.com/archive/2009/03/20/goodbye-google.html
[1]: http://www.businessweek.com/bwdaily/dnflash/may1998/nf80512d.htm http://www.businessweek.com/bwdaily/dnflash/may1998/nf80512d...
- abraham 15y agoThe new design getting previewed in most Google products seems like a departure from relying on data. It is a radically different design from Google's typical fare and while they must have done focus group and internal testing it hasn't had years of AB testing evolution like the previous standard design.
- andrewtbham 15y agoI like the new design. How do you know they didn't AB test it?
- abraham 15y agoI never said it wasn't tested. I said it hasn't had the years of AB test the previous standard design had.
- MikeCapone 15y agoTo have 'years of testing', first you have to start somewhere (days, then weeks, then months), no?
- guelo 15y agoI'm not a fan of the new designs, a lot of pages now have a huge wasted whitespace header taking up big chunks of real estate. It's weird because the design in browsers has been going in the opposite direction trying to reduce the header size.
- Symmetry 15y agoIf you want to try lots of things failure has to be cheap, and part of cheap failure is failing fast. I think 20% time almost guarantees that they keep trying new things, though.
- mikek 15y agoOne of the things that made Apple successful was having a very small number of products. Having a small number of amazing products is a good way to go.
- hga 15y agoBut there aren't very many people like Steve Jobs or corporate situations that allow such a person to exercise such control (no such result would come out of a committee) so this observation is of limited utility ... until you can arrange/figure out business models where you can do that sort of thing. For a company like Google, throwing a lot of things at the wall and seeing what sticks is not the worst approach in the world, assuming they don't upset too many people in transitions (see discussions on the App Engine).
- abraham 15y agoGoogle has gone through extensive restructuring over the last year with one or two top execs having almost complete control over their devision. I believe Google is broken down into six devisions including ads, search, social, mobile, business, and local. There might be another couple I'm missing or some of those might have been combined.
- jonknee 15y agoApple has had a large number of not amazing products too. Admitting defeat is a good way to make sure your company isn't overrun with them. I think this is a good move from Google.
- deleted 15y ago[deleted]
- mortenjorck 15y agoApple has had a very large number of not-amazing products that never made it out the door. Apple has a significantly smaller number of not-amazing products that people outside One Infinite Loop know about. The difference is that Apple tests indoors; Google tests outdoors.