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Average product lifespan of Google products before it kills them

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Re: Average product lifespan of Google products before it kills them

#3

Post by heavymark »

I imagine Google views this as a positive thing, trying a million ideas, so that hopefully it increases the chances of having at least one good and popular idea. The downside is, a lot of products they killed were good ideas, but its sink or swim and they don't get the products the needed love and attention so they don't take off and thus they kill them. And now even when releasing a good idea or good piece of hardware people will always be worried if it will be gone tomorrow, which leads to less adoption and more axing of products.

Re: Average product lifespan of Google products before it kills them

#5

Post by bryanrasmussen »

heavymark wrote: post #3

I imagine Google views this as a positive thing, trying a million ideas, so that hopefully it increases the chances of having at least one good and popular idea. The downside is, a lot of products they killed were good ideas, but its sink or swim and they don't get the products the needed love and attention so they don't take off and thus they kill them. And now even when releasing a good idea or good piece of hardwa…

well one of the popular things said on HN is that ideas are cheap and execution is the determining factor for success. I think Google was deceived by their first idea which was so good that mistakes could not derail it and now they expect every idea to be of the same caliber.

This is of course aside from all the other problems they have with a company culture rewarding ideas but not rewarding growing a product, and so forth.

Re: Average product lifespan of Google products before it kills them

#6

Post by Waterluvian »

It surprises people that Google kills products because people them as traditional products. But they're exploratory vessels for selling ads. Of course Google's ads are the product.

It's unsurprising, to me at least, that they explore lots and lots of ways to sell ads. That's exactly what you do with whatever widget your company peddles.

Re: Average product lifespan of Google products before it kills them

#8

Post by ethbro »

JohnJamesRambo wrote: post #2

Does no one at Google HQ ever have the guts to raise their hand and bring this up? It's a meme by now.

There have been some comments on here about how career advancement optimization at Google involves hopping between projects, staying long enough to launch, and then moving on.

Whereas doing good work on product maintenance or evolution is much less rewarding.

True or not, it would explain a lot about how Google (as a whole) behaves towards products.

Re: Average product lifespan of Google products before it kills them

#9

Post by harikb »

heavymark wrote: post #3

I imagine Google views this as a positive thing, trying a million ideas, so that hopefully it increases the chances of having at least one good and popular idea. The downside is, a lot of products they killed were good ideas, but its sink or swim and they don't get the products the needed love and attention so they don't take off and thus they kill them. And now even when releasing a good idea or good piece of hardwa…

I am genuinely curious if we are only seeing tip of the iceberg so to speak and there are a much larger number of projects getting killed before they are even released? Although it does not affect end consumers, I am curious from an engineering point of view.

Any Xooglers care to comment? I am not asking for actual numbers, but just ballpark numbers / estimates.

If it turns out Google experiments in the open while others experiment internally and kill products too early, may be this isn't so bad after all. Society got to see what worked and what didn't.

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