"This expectation that a new Google product will need massive adoption to justify its investment or be cancelled within four months, as was the case with Google

"This expectation that a new Google product will need massive adoption to justify its investment or be cancelled within four months, as was the case with Google Lively, will be a significant dampener new product launches." That depends on how Google treats the people who are part of failed initiatives, and how many things are cancelled overall. At many companies, sadly, people are fired for simply being on the wrong project at the wrong time. If Google doesn't set that precedent, then its employees will be less worried if their projects haven't taken off. It's also important not to kill "most" things, because people can only take so many failures. The culture of innovation could die from attrition: how many times do you want to pour your heart and soul into things, only to see them die? Hopefully Google doesn't cancel projects too often, and has a well established "salvage" operation for parts of old projects.