My information is way out of date, but I believe most Google products are still tested that way. There's a long Googler-only incubation period for everything. A

My information is way out of date, but I believe most Google products are still tested that way. There's a long Googler-only incubation period for everything. And Robert Scoble was probably on Google+ months before you knew about it. The people at Google aren't stupid. They know they need to iterate with customers. But they're iterating towards a very specific event, the day when they turn it on for a billion people in 10 languages. I'm saying that very wide launch makes it kind of sterile. And the drive towards scalability-first probably prevents them from exploring quirkier ideas.