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Good decision. There's nothing wrong with not releasing something you don't feel is up to par. I actually admire that. Ship it when it's ready, and not a mom
by drgath 14y ago
Good decision. There's nothing wrong with not releasing something you don't feel is up to par. I actually admire that. Ship it when it's ready, and not a moment sooner.
On the other hand, there is something wrong with releasing a product that turns out to be over-priced and under-featured. That worked for Google in the past where it was all Web products, the price was "free", you could just slap a "beta" label on it and iterate daily. But that doesn't work when something costs $300 dollars in a competitive marketplace with established leaders.
- Mythbusters 14y agoIt makes Google look amateurish to announce a product with big fanfare and to cancel it later admitting that it does not do much... executive powerplays at work I guess...
- Zenst 14y agoAmerteurish would be to blindly carry on launching a product and then releaseing version 2.0 that fixed all the issues and making the 1.0 unsuported. No, what google did was to listern to feedback and respond in the best possible way. Those who ordered get the product and there money back and those who havnt get a chance to wait for the improved version based upon feedback. Realy can't fault that and to call it amateurish is perhaps overly strong. No power plays at work at all, mearly good PR/marketing and activly listerning to feedback.
- azylman 14y agoAmerteurish would be to blindly carry on launching a product and then releaseing version 2.0 that fixed all the issues and making the 1.0 unsuported. Sounds like Google TV...
- sandieman 14y agoGoogle TV's lack of success has certainly taught them a lesson or two here. Hence, the freebies as an attempt to win back good will.
- Tyrannosaurs 14y agoThe lesson they need to learn is don't do things that lose goodwill in the first place.
- wpietri 14y agoThey may have made the best of a bad situation, but getting into this situation is still amateurish. I'm all for listening to feedback. But there are ways of getting feedback on a product without doing a major product launch. Like, say, making 50 prototypes and trying them out on Google employees and external user testers. There's no way these problems wouldn't have surfaced in user tests. I suspect all the major issues would have shown up with just 5-10 testers. The question is: why didn't they do that? Plenty of people know how. Since I can't believe that all their executives, designers, and engineers are that clueless/arrogant, I think it's reasonable to suspect that the problem is one clueless executive exerting power.
- Tyrannosaurs 14y agoListening to feedback is great but I literally don't know anyone who didn't look at it and immediately go "nice but $300?" There have to be questions about how no-one worked out at least some of the larger issues before it got anywhere near launch.
- z92 14y ago> There's nothing wrong with not releasing something you don't feel is up to par. Over doing it leads to Duke Nuken Forever like situation.
- corin_ 14y agoI'd say DNF is the opposite situation - their delays weren't due to having a product but not releasing it because it wasn't up to par, their delays were about not finishing the product at all. Then, last year, they released something they knew wasn't up to par.
- z92 14y agoThey weren't finishing it because they weren't believing it was up to par. And were rewriting it over and over.
- corin_ 14y agoKind of true, but the root cause wasn't "well we could release, but it isn't good enough", it was "we've taken so long to get here that nobody would buy it because it's already so old before even being released, we'll have to start again". The rewrites were cause by the delays - and sure, they caused more delays themselves, but not as much as the original delays. And in the end, they put out a product that they knew wasn't good enough. Literally knew it.