How Google Decides To Cancel a Project 75
The New York Times is running a story about the criteria involved when Google scraps one of their projects. While a project's popularity among users is important, Google also examines whether they can get enough employees interested in it, and whether it has a large enough scope — they prefer not to waste time solving minor problems. The article takes a look at the specific reasons behind the recent cancellation of several products.
"Dennis Crowley, one of two co-founders who sold Dodgeball to Google in 2005 and stayed on, said that he had trouble competing for the attention of other Google engineers to expand the service. 'If you're a product manager, you have to recruit people and their "20 percent time."' ... [Jeff Huber, the company's senior vice president of engineering] said that Google eventually concluded that Dodgeball's vision was too narrow. ... Still, Google found the concepts behind Dodgeball intriguing, and early this month, it released Google Latitude, an add-on to Google Maps that allows people to share their location with friends and family members. It's more sophisticated than Dodgeball, with automatic location tracking and more options for privacy and communication."
Re:But will this work in your company? (Score:4, Interesting)
Well sometimes things aren't quite right like when the shit is runny. MSFT tablet, and ultra mobile PC's, fall into this category.
A good idea, done in by poor interface choices, barely tolerable battery life, high prices, etc.
In the next 18 months with the emergence of touch screen netbooks with new interfaces, and more importantly low prices. you will see just how much needs to change in slight ways.
Apple does the throw shit at the wall and see what sticks too. however that wall is normally well hidden from view. My iphone is awesome. however the number of prototypes that were built before is the really interesting question.
Re:Recruit? (Score:3, Interesting)
All Google projects have to recruit engineers. It's just the Google way.
Re:But will this work in your company? (Score:5, Interesting)
Oddly enough, the process isn't -too- different in smaller companies. You don't actually build the prototype, but since you can get direct access to the owner/boss, you can present your idea to him/her. If they like it, you'll get to build it.
It's medium-sized companies that have the problem. They can't afford the 'see what sticks' approach, and you can't talked to the owner/boss personally, so there's no way for this to happen without some favoritism being involved. Even companies that have 'good idea' programs rarely actually get them.
Re:But will this work in your company? (Score:4, Interesting)
Google has the benefit of having a lot of employees, a lot of goodwill, and a lot of money, so when it takes the "throw shit at the wall and see what sticks" business strategy, things have a way of working out for them.
But would this work for anyone else? Maybe Apple.
No way. Apple try hard to give off an aura of 'hey, we're just cool guys having fun', but the reality is they are very structured and don't tend to do off the wall projects.
There is really one guy making the decisions as to what is good enough to survive, or even be started, and that's Steve Jobs.
Ok, he makes a lot of good choices, but they don't have anything like the setup that Google have.
They typically launch very tightly controlled products and evolve those, adding new features as required in order to either stay ahead of the competition or to get users to re buy the latest version.
Where they win is presentation, their stuff appeals to non geeks, so people get tricked into beleiving that Apple themselves are as cool and fun as their products and advertising make them appear.
Re:But will this work in your company? (Score:4, Interesting)
That's different really. Google's approach is to build something and see what the Internet community likes. The small business approach is to pitch something and see what the boss/owner likes. A bit different.
But at medium to larger businesses, you do get the chance to present new ideas to higher levels of management. If you pitch an idea and it gets some attention, your group can be given funding to produce a prototype.
Still, usually no one outside the company gets to see these prototypes. There are a couple of exceptions -- in the auto industry you have events like the North American International Auto Show where prototypes are tossed at consumers and marketroids note how the media and how consumers react to the prototypes. That information fuels decisions about new models for the next few years, typically.
But Google's approach is altogether different. First off, the vast majority of their money is tied up in infrastructure, not development. Producing a new product doesn't cost nearly as much as it would a traditional software house.
Think of it this way: what's it take to produce an N-tier enterprise intranet app? An analyst/project manager, maybe a couple of page designers, a couple of domain experts, a 3-4 core software developers, a DBA and a systems/network administrator. And you can do it with half that if you have pay for a team of highly-experienced superstars.
So the reason they can afford to 'toss shit against the wall and see what sticks' is because they're already spending on the infrastructure -- that cost is known and somewhat fixed. The variable part, the new development, costs relatively very little.
Re:But will this work in your company? (Score:5, Interesting)
Re:But will this work in your company? (Score:3, Interesting)
who would want to work on infrastructure which is never directly visible to the outside world?
I work at Google on an infrastructure project that is not directly visible to the outside world. On a normal working day I really don't care if what I do is directly visible to the outside world. I can see how this project is a good thing for our users, and I know for a fact that our founders consider this project very important, shouldn't that be more important to me than what bloggers around the internet think? The only times where it is slightly annoying to be working on something that isn't visible is when friends from outside the company ask me what I am working on, and the only answer I can give is "internal infrastructure". But the project has importance and technical challenges to be solved. And even if I was granted a wish for something to change, then working on something more visible wouldn't be the first thing on my list - if at all.