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Editing takes place before publishing, not after. A newspaper that prints a dozen retractions per day is not well edited.
by jtbigwoo 13y ago
Editing takes place before publishing, not after. A newspaper that prints a dozen retractions per day is not well edited.
- mankyd 13y agoA fair point, but as they learn to edit, they can't leave what they consider to be unsuccessful products in place either. Unlike publishing, product development isn't static.
- jtbigwoo 13y agoIt's a hard problem for them. In traditional industries there's some natural protection from the problems that google encounters with product management. It would take Samsung forever to start up a factory to make a new kind of washing machine, for example. If the new washing machines don't sell, Samsung could discontinue the product line without pissing off very many customers because all of the washing machines they already sold would continue working. Google has the opposite problem where it's easy to start a new product but discontinuing even a minor product pisses off thousands of people. If they cared about customer happiness and trust, they'd get better at choosing products to release and they'd move more quickly to killing off unsuccessful ones. (Honestly, I'm not sure they care about customers enough to change. They may place more value on flexibility than they do on customer happiness and trust.)
- tomkarlo 13y agoTwo of the biggest data points for editing products - their popularity and growth rate - don't exist before you launch. I'm sure Google doesn't launch products it believes will be unpopular, so whatever launches and ends up unpopular, that data point was a surprise. It would be nice if you could tell which products will take off before you build them - it would save everyone a lot of trouble.