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Google Businesses The Internet

Google Formula For Adding New Products 165

Posted by CmdrTaco from the solid-diamond-fortress-in-california dept.
gpmac writes "Google executives attempted to demystify the search company's product decisions during presentations with Wall Street analysts on Wednesday. As Google Inc. has moved beyond Web search and into product areas as diverse as e-mail, photo-organizing software and mapping tools, one of the common questions for the company is how it decides where to devote resources. Looks like they are being a little more serious about it than their pigeon story would indicate."
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Google Formula For Adding New Products More

Google Formula For Adding New Products

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  • I deduced the formula several months ago (Score:5, Funny)

    by Neil Blender ( 555885 ) <neilblender@gmail.com> on Thursday February 10, 2005 @02:50PM (#11633184)
    Here is the psuedo code:

    if ( 1 ) {
    create_new_product();
    }

  • Formula (Score:5, Funny)

    by LiquidCoooled ( 634315 ) on Thursday February 10, 2005 @02:50PM (#11633187) Homepage Journal
    I'm Feeling Lucky
    • :) Your sig is pretty appropriate. Google doesn't seem to believe in it, though.

    • Re:Formula (Score:5, Funny)

      by standsolid ( 619377 ) <kenny@nOspaM.standsolid.com> on Thursday February 10, 2005 @03:45PM (#11633848) Homepage
      Services synergy:

      Imagine, You go to Google Maps and type in your address, then press "I'm feeling lucky".

      It then uses Google Local to find the nearest (m/h)otel, then uses Froogle to figure out which one is the cheapest (considering distance and gas mileage). Hell it can even find reviews on usenet using Google Groups

      Then it books the motel room for your lucky night.

      Hm... this is Slashdot. Back it up a bit...

      Pushing "I'm feeling lucky" will map out to the nearest, um, "independent escort service" using the same tools/methods as mentioned above. :)

  • The Creative Minds At Work (Score:4, Funny)

    by ackthpt ( 218170 ) * on Thursday February 10, 2005 @02:50PM (#11633189) Homepage Journal
    I have a friend who works at Google and he gave me a glimpse of the creative processes at work at the very top...

    During the Christmas party, Sergey and Larry were driving a large radio controlled SUV around the offices.

    Nothing unusual there.

    So a few weeks later this same SUV comes bumping around the corner, with the top ripped off and a remote controllable camera mounted on the chassis. One of the two (Sergey & Larry) was navigating it, while the other was operating the camera.

    I expect this is all part of their new Search Engine Strategy.

    we love google, yes we do. without google we wouldn't know about this [comingsoon.net] while searching for a louis vuitton leopardskin defrobnicator...

  • Beta as a part of branding, my foot (Score:4, Insightful)

    by winkydink ( 650484 ) * <sv.dude@gmail.com> on Thursday February 10, 2005 @02:54PM (#11633231) Homepage Journal
    "Google itself was in beta for a very substantial number of years," said Page, who is president of products. "Part of our brand is that we under-promise and we over-deliver, and being in beta is part of that. It's part of our branding strategy."

    Translated, in case something should blow up, we want to wait as long as possible before not being able to say, "Hey, it's in beta. What did you expect?"

    • Re:Beta as a part of branding, my foot (Score:5, Insightful)

      by millwall ( 622730 ) on Thursday February 10, 2005 @02:58PM (#11633284)
      That's probably exactly what they mean. I've got no problems with it though. And I think they should have credit for not only saying it, byt also meaning it.

      I'm really glad that such companies do exist. I'm sick and tired with all comapnies that over-promise and under-deliver.
      • How about companies start to deliver what they promise. Not over, not under, just so! Saying that under-promising and over-delivering is good is sort of like saying that since you hate inflation you like deflation. It's hard to make informed choices when you are not told the true lay of the land.

        That said, I do like many of googles products and use two of them on a daily basis. That is more then I can say about any company out there. Still, the main critique stands.

        • Re:Beta as a part of branding, my foot (Score:2, Interesting)

          by Anonymous Coward
          Don't knock it so hard. I make my life by underpromising and overdelivering? How does this work out so well? I can underpromise at a level that most people can't deliver even if they overpromise.

          It gives me a comfort cushion to the level that I wish to excel every day. Taking away the pizzazz of underpromising and overdelivering will force me to adopt a standard level of overachievement which then gives my critics a benchmark to hold me to.

          I really hate performance reviews. It sucks being better than
      • That's probably exactly what they mean. I've got no problems with it though. And I think they should have credit for not only saying it, byt also meaning it.

        I'm really glad that such companies do exist. I'm sick and tired with all comapnies that over-promise and under-deliver.

        As Microsoft is often accused of, i.e. our beta testing program is release it to the public and see what goes wrong then patch it.

        While Microsoft is omnipresent and therefore their bugs get a lot of press, there are any number of


      • I'm sick and tired with all comapnies that over-promise and under-deliver.

        Bingo, so are most people. Google seems to recognize this and are doing great stuff as a result.
    • If they suspect it might blow up, wouldn't it be most responsible to leave in beta? If there is any doubt in a products completeness or reliability isn't it best to know that?
    • Translated, in case something should blow up, we want to wait as long as possible before not being able to say, "Hey, it's in beta. What did you expect?"

      You like Microsoft's strategy better?
    • Translated, in case something should blow up, we want to wait as long as possible before not being able to say, "Hey, it's in beta. What did you expect?"

      Well it's free and in beta, right? What did you expect?

      But hopefully they also give a discount to advertisers who place ads on Gmail, since Gmail's still in beta. Or at least warn them.
    • My experience has been very good with their betas, the product is completely usable and any problems are usaly very subtle bugs or usability issues.
      I get annoyed at companies that use betas to unit test their applications.
    • Translated, in case something should blow up, we want to wait as long as possible before not being able to say, "Hey, it's in beta. What did you expect?"

      Well, it's clear that in some cases they CANT [typepad.com] go "gold" with a product, because they wouldn't be able to charge for it (and it's unclear what the business model would be).

      Besides, they're making LOTS of dough, creating new products, and keeping their customers happy... it's that good enough?

  • 70-20-10 (Score:2, Insightful)

    by de1orean ( 851146 )
    interesting, but how will they deal with the inverse proportion of employee motivation?

    70% of employees will want to work on the 10% of stuff that is "truly interesting to us."

    • Re:70-20-10 (Score:3, Interesting)

      by suso ( 153703 )
      Exactly. I would hope that they would find that the majority of their employees would find 70% of what they do interesting. Otherwise, what are they doing there? Just a paycheck? That would be sad.

      But from looking through their website and doing a strict count of what products and services they have, I would say that 70% of them are experimental, and 10% or 20% count for the search engine part. But that's based on count.
    • Simple: don't employ people who refuse to work on anything that isn't "exciting" or "interesting".

      If I worked at Google I would view their 10% as a perk, and be very grateful for it. Most companies will have you working 100% of the time on stuff that is not exactly exciting or interesting, or even necessarily mentally stimulating.

    • When they talk about "truly interesting", I think they mean truly interesting to Larry and Sergey. I could see how making their search moneymakers (Ad*) more global/profitable/etc. would not be very interesting to people who think of themselves as being innovators. It is definitely the right answer to Wall Street to say that they spend 70% of their resources on the search stuff, since that makes all their money. It's their management's challenge to find talented people who are interested in doing the 70% th

  • I for one... (Score:5, Interesting)

    by opposume ( 600667 ) on Thursday February 10, 2005 @03:00PM (#11633317) Homepage
    don't care how they deside. As long as they keep coming out with more usefull tools that will make my life easier, that's all I care about. Keep up the good work google!

  • gauction (Score:5, Interesting)

    by Anonymous Coward on Thursday February 10, 2005 @03:04PM (#11633364)
    When will Google bring out the google auction site??! Ebay has nothing on them except brand recognition. I know google can pull off a better interface and faster server performance. The competition will help keep the costs low.
    • ebay is a bunch of ass-hats.
      in an attempt to wring more money out of people ebay has become heavy and hard to understand.

      google could pull the rug out from under them pretty quick.
      they could allow people to post auctions for free while in beta... this would get them a huge user group.
      • ebay is a bunch of ass-hats.
        in an attempt to wring more money out of people ebay has become heavy and hard to understand.

        Maybe it was a calculated move on their part, to try to raise short term profits, in anticipation of an inevitable "G-bay", when they would have to lower prices to remain competitive?
        • My objection to ebay is less about their fees than their interface. I distinctly remember my disgust when they released their 'new' interface.

          Now you have to wade through a ton of non-auction(ebay store) adds to get to the real stuff.
      • Not to mention some of the really nifty UI features their Javascript wizards could cook up, stuff like Auctions that update in real-time.
        Then there are all of the other Google products that could interoperate...
        Add a (paid)feature of auction listings where they will show up on adsense.
        Add some kind of integration with Froogle to suggest prices based on similar items(or point ppl who lost an auction to a similar item),
        Integrate with Google Local to show only auctions from a particular city/region/state (grea

    • Re:gauction (Score:2, Funny)

      by Tsiangkun ( 746511 )
      That's a lot of pressure to put on google. Going head to head with a powerhouse like ebay might be enough to cause the very intelligent people at google to crack and start functioning at a lower level of intelligence.

  • I wish they'd move into house search (Score:5, Funny)

    by syntap ( 242090 ) on Thursday February 10, 2005 @03:04PM (#11633367)
    I'd love to key in "DVD player remote" or "car keys" and have it show me a map of where it is in my house.

  • Google has to many beta products at the moment (Score:3, Insightful)

    by hsmith ( 818216 ) on Thursday February 10, 2005 @03:07PM (#11633406)
    When are they going to actually finish something? Everything except for the standard search seems to be in beta. Are they going to produce anymore finished products anytime soon?

    • Re: (Score:3, Informative)

      by account_deleted ( 4530225 )
      Comment removed based on user account deletion

    • Re:Google has to many beta products at the moment (Score:1, Insightful)

      by Anonymous Coward
      They don't need to.

      Most of the products you are referring to are already fully functional (even better than similar products). The symbol of beta is just so that... (fill in blank) The point is that it hardly matters. Program is compeletely functional, you've got a product. Calling it beta doesn't change that much.

      And of course, no program can ever be truly finished. We all know that.
    • IANAL so I can't be certain, but from what I've heard, the reason for the "keep everything in beta as long as possible" that we've been seeing from Google is largely due to legal rather than technical reasons. When the product is still in beta and hasn't been "officially" released, as it were, you can make changes to the User Argreement Contract without being liable to anyone else (such as perhaps the users that signed up under the old agreement).

      In this case, I can see how it would make a lot of sense fo

      • Re:Google has to many beta products at the moment (Score:4, Interesting)

        by generic-man ( 33649 ) on Thursday February 10, 2005 @03:33PM (#11633698) Homepage Journal
        Bullshit. PayPal hasn't been "beta" for years, yet they are courteous enough to inform me when they change the terms of their User Agreement. If I don't agree to the terms of the new User Agreement, I have the option to terminate my account at any time.

        Beta is all about deflecting criticism of Google products. GMail doesn't support IMAP? Well, it's in beta! Froogle can be easily exploited to report deceptively low prices -- that's in beta too! Google News often displays stories as 'related' when they have nothing in common, but that's in beta. It just goes on and on. People have very high expectations of Google, but Google hasn't released a new product since Google Groups (and that's been replaced by Google Groups 2, which is a sharply-criticized beta).

    • Re:Google has to many beta products at the moment (Score:5, Insightful)

      by Fnkmaster ( 89084 ) on Thursday February 10, 2005 @03:49PM (#11633904)
      Actually I think "beta" partially means "we are figuring out the business model right now". Like email - it's not that they are holding back on a wide release of GMail to add more features. They are just tweaking the profit model, and recognize that as part of that process they may be forced to modify functionality substantially.

      By keeping it in "beta" they can change the featureset or tweak to satisfy advertiser demand and have a cover-your-ass story just in case they change things ("sorry, that wasn't a finished product you were using, it was just a beta test").

      Once they have a firm idea of how they are going to make money off of the product and have added advertising into the mix fully, it seems to come out of beta.

  • All hail our computer overlords (Score:4, Funny)

    by Anonymous Coward on Thursday February 10, 2005 @03:09PM (#11633425)
    [conspiracy]What they don't tell you is that 100% of their buisiness model is to make Google so knowledgeable about everything that when it does spontaneously become artificially intelligent it can take over the world in a couple hours. What better way to approach the top-down method to AI design than with a gigantic search engine? [/conspiracy]
  • Google is a great company. They have revolutionized the internet and I believe they will continue to do so. Maybe they make a little money, however go to the Google HQ Office and I guarantee you will see more old clunkers than BMW's and Mercedes-Benz. They are people who are devoted to their work and they deserve to make a profit. I can't tell you where I'd be today without Google and some of their features. It's nice to have a good company who does it all...

    • Re:Don't be cheap now. (Score:1, Funny)

      by Anonymous Coward
      Thanks for being so damned insightful.

    • Re:Don't be cheap now. (Score:1, Funny)

      by Anonymous Coward
      Can we please stop using the word "revolutionary" to describe everything from Google to Tiny-Tot Pull-up Pants?

      Thanks a bunch.

  • Not many companies work that way (Score:4, Interesting)

    by irikar ( 751706 ) on Thursday February 10, 2005 @03:10PM (#11633435)

    Under promise and over deliver. How many companies work that way these days?

    How many programmers in how many companies have to over work in order to try to achieve what was over-promised and consequently under-delivered by over rated marketing and executive dudes?

    I'm not sure I totally subscribe to the idea of staying in beta for that long though... But you have to admit the idea of gmail invites is brilliant. Once gmail leaves the beta stage, its user base will be huge. Anyone has an idea of how big this user base is already?

    • I don't really pay a whole lot of attention to this stuff, but how often do they announce products before they are in beta either.

      It seems to me that they get to work on stuff until it's done and release it as a beta for some end user testing. I'm sure they have their own internal deadlines, but it looks like those deadlines aren't driven by marketing and product launch dates like they are in other companies.

      If something isn't done, or isn't done right, I don't think they release it. Compare that to mos

    • But you have to admit the idea of gmail invites is brilliant. Once gmail leaves the beta stage, its user base will be huge. Anyone has an idea of how big this user base is already?

      Since Google is using invites rather than a free-for-all signup, I'm hoping, and confident, that they'll wipe all the Gmail accounts after the beta. That way everyone can have a fair chance to get whatever username they want.

      Alternatively, since they are going to be a domain registrar, you could host you could register a do

    • Anyone has an idea of how big this user base is already?

      No idea but I can garuntee its about to explode in growth or is about to "go live"( as in not be beta anymore). My reason for thinking that is I was handed 50 invites the other day.

      • You only got 50? I was given 50 twice.

        The first time, I donated 45 of them to the invite spooler, and retained 5 "just in case". A couple days later, it was back at 50 again. So I donated another 45 to the spooler and kept another 5 "just in case".

        I'm not providing a link to the invite spooler because it's been taken down due to being overwhelmed by gmail invites. He claimed he had about 3.5 million of them, his server couldn't take the load.

        Only 21 of the 90 invites I submitted were used. Good thing I k

  • 20% of google employee's time... (Score:5, Insightful)

    by jxyama ( 821091 ) on Thursday February 10, 2005 @03:14PM (#11633479)
    is dedicated to working on projects he/she wants to work on, completely unrelated to his/her core job function.

    i assume this means you get to take one day a week to brainstorm and work on whatever sounds cool.

    when you have a collection of fairly bright and competent people and provide them with computational and other resources and give them some free time, you get some cool stuff.

    • here's a talk given by a google employee at Univ. of Washington. he mentions the 20% deal - the talk was given Oct. '04, so i don't think it's outdated yet.

      abstract page (with a link to the archived talk, ~1 hour) [washington.edu]

      • I was at a technical talk at Google in Dublin only a few months ago and they mentioned the 20% of time on personal projects. It's still very much a part of how the company works.

    • I agree (while not claiming to be bright and competent). Often I go off on tangents, trying to solve relevant, nagging business-related problems via innovation with similarly-minded drones. It's actually fun to do, but if it's not part of your "official" job description there's the risk that you get called on it ("wasting time", from a short-sighted management perspective).

      Google's idea of paid 20% time on personal interest projects is a good one, as people that prove that they can consistently come up wi
  • Perhaps Google can explain how it's going to make money now that it's advertising model is being blown to tiny bits and pieces.

    Perhaps they could erotic pictures next to any search results.
  • Google Sentient! motto: killing all humans in the process of the search of the unsearchable! :D
  • Somewhat related to the topic of google's continued expansion into new product areas -- how does google make money?

    I love the company, and I hope they continue doing what they are doing, but looking at their stock I get unpleasant flashbacks to the tech bubble of the late 90's, where companies with high coolness factor but low profits had skyrocketing stocks. Are ads and 'google appliance' sales enough to drive the $189 per-share stock price?
    • I wouldn't say that Google has low profits. They are already profitable. They've been profitable even before the IPO. Their last report fourth quarter net incoming was $204.1 million.

      Are ads and 'google appliance' sales enough to drive the $189 per-share stock price?
      I just wish I got into GOOG at 85.
      • Stupid slashcode. It should have said:

        Are ads and 'google appliance' sales enough to drive the $189 per-share stock price? -- You do realize this question has no meaning. You can't compare stock prices to stock prices because they have different numbers of outstanding shares. The number you should be looking at is the market cap. This takes the number of shares into comparison. The market cap for GOOG is about the same as that of YHOO. Of the two, which do you think will be more successfull?
    • When you are the #1 destination on the net, and everybody comes to you for searching, then yes, ad sales are more than enough to drive a profitable business, especially when those ads are found to be the most effective advertising method on the entire internet.

  • So you've got NOTHING to do? (Score:3, Interesting)

    by ReadParse ( 38517 ) <john@IIIfunnycow.com minus threevowels> on Thursday February 10, 2005 @04:39PM (#11634501) Homepage
    Yeah, sometimes I feel like somebody who doesn't appreciate the awesome non-web-search stuff that Google is doing might feel like a fast-food manager I used to work for:

    "If you've got time to lean, you've got time to clean."

    I've recently seen in Waffle House they have a sign for the cook.. after the last order, "Kill the flame and GET IN THE GAME". Meaning to turn off the gas burner (they NEVER do) and to "walk the line," cleaning. Hey, remind me to never go back to a food service job, where the very idea that your work might be done and you might sit around for a minute or two is ludicrous. I can't believe I used to live like that.

    My point is that some of these projects that come out, as cool as they are, seem extraneous, almost like they're SO BORED with web searching that they just come up with this stuff in their spare time.

    "Oh, so I suppose that search code is BUG FREE, then??!?! Huh, Google?"

    I love Google. Love 'em. The mapping is awesome, the mail is awesome -- I even love Google Sets, which seems to be perpetually in the lab.

    RP
  • I sense a new market bubble. If a couple of anoninted "smart guys" like Google's founders can answer analyst questions like "how do you decide on new products?" with answers like "we have a formula: 70% exactly what we already do, 20% doing that in another platform, and 10% stuff we like, but can't explain", we can all peddle our BS to these brokers. If you can't impress them with intelligence, baffle them with bullshit - or do both at once.

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