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They probably didn't lose as much money as they're gaining from the successful ones
by anjc 13y ago
They probably didn't lose as much money as they're gaining from the successful ones
- johnward 13y agoI'm sure the gains from AdSense and Gmail alone outweigh anything they lost. Also engineers can stay happy if they work on things they like more often. So there could be an implied cost (by losing employees) to not allowing 20% time. I'll also add that it's almost impossible to stay focus on 1 thing 8 hours+ a day for 5 days a week. Even if there is no 20% time I'm sure they still lose time to unproductive activities. Maybe 20% time actually captured some of the time that would otherwise be spent browsing the web or making pointless comments like this on HN.
- nfoz 13y agoIt's not as if Google never would have thought to make a web-based mail if someone didn't do it in their 20% time...
- toyg 13y agoAt the time, Google was a search engine, period. Expecting Google to build a webmail system would have been like expecting Twitter to release an accounting package.