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Search was a product designed by two engineers. Maps from 2005 was a very sleek product, but at the time there were no competitors on the web, and now Maps is s

Search was a product designed by two engineers. Maps from 2005 was a very sleek product, but at the time there were no competitors on the web, and now Maps is so ubiquitous, and requires such an insane data investment, that we'll probably never know the ideal Maps design, because every competitor out there is still catching up. Their primary advantage was the money they threw at mapping data and the ability for them to give it out for free. Gmail was not actually a particularly elegant product design, it offered an escape from spam and manually managing your mailbox storage. Back then, if you used a free email experience, you were bombarded with banner ads, had 100MB of storage, and 99% of that was eaten by the spam sent directly to your inbox. Features are not product design. Chrome might be a good exception, though. I still get the sense that it was primarily driven by inspired engineers. The reason for Chrome's success is probably not it's innovative design (it was it's performance), but it certainly was an incredible advance.

fidotron 3y ago
“Gmail was not actually a particularly elegant product design” It popularized instant search, tagging and threading to such a degree you have clearly forgotten how elegant it was!
- rezonant 3y ago
  Features are not product design.
  - fidotron 3y ago
    You seem to confuse graphic design and product design. Product design is what something does, how it is structured and how it behaves to user interaction, _and_ how it appears, not just one of them. GMail was almost to email what the iPhone was to smartphones.
  - dolmen 3y ago
    Labels vs folders. This is product design.
- DonHopkins 3y ago
  And excellent spam filtering. The irony of having an advertising company filter out your advertisements so you only see theirs. And loving it. SUPERCUT Every "And loving it" in Get Smart (1965-1970) https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3aeETaCsop8 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3aeETaCsop8
- vishnugupta 3y ago
  Exactly. If I remember my thoughts back when Gmail was launched I was clearly awestruck. Gmail showed what was possible to do if one had fast internet connection. All those little interactions enabled through ajax! I think it was the first time, atleast for me, a product was as good as a desktop app w.r.t interactions and usability. For comparison, with Yahoo mail one had to hit compose button and wait for a few seconds for compose window to open up. With Gmail it was extremely nifty and nearly instantaneous because I think it was done clientside and Ajax.
mbreese 3y ago
> Maps from 2005 was a very sleek product, but at the time there were no competitors on the web Mapquest would beg to differ. To me, the interface was the killer feature for Maps. The data and trip planning functionality existed already on the web (as my print outs of driving routes in the late 90s can attest to). But being able to just scroll around a new city was amazing. Every other site required clicking through every North or West button with a round trip to the server. It wasn’t until later that the satellite data and street view data became the next killer feature.
- rezonant 3y ago
  Oof that's true I forgot about MapQuest.
  - Apocryphon 3y ago
    Yo, where's the movie playin'? (Upper West Side, dude) Well, let's hit up Yahoo! Maps to find the dopest route I prefer MapQuest; (that's a good one, too) Google Maps is the best; (true that;) double true! So yeah, there was a third competitor- https://www.searchenginewatch.com/2005/12/27/saturday-night-live-skit-mentions-mapquest-yahoo-maps-and-google-maps/?amp=1 https://www.searchenginewatch.com/2005/12/27/saturday-night-...
robin_reala 3y ago
The primary reason for Chrome’s success was literal billions of dollars in pervasive advertising (I remember years of Chrome TV ads and billboards), ads plastered all over Google’s products saying “better in Chrome”, and product bundling into many many pieces of software a user might download (e.g. Acrobat[1]). That’s not to say that it wasn’t a technically good product, but it wasn’t so much better than the competition that it would have got to the market share it has on its own merits. [1] https://www.labnol.org/software/chrome-with-adobe-reader/20123/ https://www.labnol.org/software/chrome-with-adobe-reader/201...
- fidotron 3y ago
  Honestly I feel like I am in a parallel universe with ideas like this. Chrome was dramatically faster than anything else (thanks to v8 which was a total revolution for js engines) and each tab crashed separately, with far better security than other browsers of the time. On Windows (and initially it was only on Windows) this was a big deal and so it displaced a huge proportion of the tech aware userbase very fast, permeating out from there. The billboards were a thing but not what drove initial adoption to critical mass.
  - crazygringo 3y ago
    Totally agreed. I remember the first couple years of Chrome, and I didn't work at a tech company at the time, but everyone did work in front of a computer. It was remarkable how quickly Chrome spread among the employees. Nothing to do with advertising -- just that it was so much faster and the whole app never crashed. Whenever you heard someone cursing because their browser had crashed and they lost their tabs and immediate work, someone in the next cubicle would go, "why aren't you using Chrome?" It really was that simple. It was all word of mouth.
  - Apocryphon 3y ago
    Also because Firefox had become bloated and clunky at that point, Chrome was much more lightweight and zippy. It was Mozilla’s complacency that ceded their position as the alternate browser.

fidotron 3y ago

“Gmail was not actually a particularly elegant product design” It popularized instant search, tagging and threading to such a degree you have clearly forgotten how elegant it was!

rezonant 3y ago
Features are not product design.
- fidotron 3y ago
  You seem to confuse graphic design and product design. Product design is what something does, how it is structured and how it behaves to user interaction, _and_ how it appears, not just one of them. GMail was almost to email what the iPhone was to smartphones.
- dolmen 3y ago
  Labels vs folders. This is product design.
DonHopkins 3y ago
And excellent spam filtering. The irony of having an advertising company filter out your advertisements so you only see theirs. And loving it. SUPERCUT Every "And loving it" in Get Smart (1965-1970) https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3aeETaCsop8 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3aeETaCsop8
vishnugupta 3y ago
Exactly. If I remember my thoughts back when Gmail was launched I was clearly awestruck. Gmail showed what was possible to do if one had fast internet connection. All those little interactions enabled through ajax! I think it was the first time, atleast for me, a product was as good as a desktop app w.r.t interactions and usability. For comparison, with Yahoo mail one had to hit compose button and wait for a few seconds for compose window to open up. With Gmail it was extremely nifty and nearly instantaneous because I think it was done clientside and Ajax.

mbreese 3y ago

> Maps from 2005 was a very sleek product, but at the time there were no competitors on the web Mapquest would beg to differ. To me, the interface was the killer feature for Maps. The data and trip planning functionality existed already on the web (as my print outs of driving routes in the late 90s can attest to). But being able to just scroll around a new city was amazing. Every other site required clicking through every North or West button with a round trip to the server. It wasn’t until later that the satellite data and street view data became the next killer feature.

rezonant 3y ago
Oof that's true I forgot about MapQuest.
- Apocryphon 3y ago
  Yo, where's the movie playin'? (Upper West Side, dude) Well, let's hit up Yahoo! Maps to find the dopest route I prefer MapQuest; (that's a good one, too) Google Maps is the best; (true that;) double true! So yeah, there was a third competitor- https://www.searchenginewatch.com/2005/12/27/saturday-night-live-skit-mentions-mapquest-yahoo-maps-and-google-maps/?amp=1 https://www.searchenginewatch.com/2005/12/27/saturday-night-...

robin_reala 3y ago

The primary reason for Chrome’s success was literal billions of dollars in pervasive advertising (I remember years of Chrome TV ads and billboards), ads plastered all over Google’s products saying “better in Chrome”, and product bundling into many many pieces of software a user might download (e.g. Acrobat[1]). That’s not to say that it wasn’t a technically good product, but it wasn’t so much better than the competition that it would have got to the market share it has on its own merits. [1] https://www.labnol.org/software/chrome-with-adobe-reader/20123/ https://www.labnol.org/software/chrome-with-adobe-reader/201...

fidotron 3y ago
Honestly I feel like I am in a parallel universe with ideas like this. Chrome was dramatically faster than anything else (thanks to v8 which was a total revolution for js engines) and each tab crashed separately, with far better security than other browsers of the time. On Windows (and initially it was only on Windows) this was a big deal and so it displaced a huge proportion of the tech aware userbase very fast, permeating out from there. The billboards were a thing but not what drove initial adoption to critical mass.
- crazygringo 3y ago
  Totally agreed. I remember the first couple years of Chrome, and I didn't work at a tech company at the time, but everyone did work in front of a computer. It was remarkable how quickly Chrome spread among the employees. Nothing to do with advertising -- just that it was so much faster and the whole app never crashed. Whenever you heard someone cursing because their browser had crashed and they lost their tabs and immediate work, someone in the next cubicle would go, "why aren't you using Chrome?" It really was that simple. It was all word of mouth.
- Apocryphon 3y ago
  Also because Firefox had become bloated and clunky at that point, Chrome was much more lightweight and zippy. It was Mozilla’s complacency that ceded their position as the alternate browser.