No, they don't want to open this up to everyone until they can confirm that ad revenue is unaffected by the changes.
That's a very good strategy - testing new features by controlled rollout so that their potential revenue impact can be fully analyzed. Every company that lives on profit should adopt that strategy. Thanks for point it out.
It's the reason we still have the Google Black Bar when they highly publicized a new navigation last year. It hurt traffic to their other properties.
Tangent question: Does anyone have tips on making demo videos like the one embedded here? Basically something like Camtasia, but with supports the fake-perspective shots that are used in parts.
Adobe After Effects? Adobe Premiere? I think fake perspectival effects are a bit too specific of a feature to bundle into a generic screen recorder.
"Request an invite". Dear god, Google still thinking it's a cute little startup. It really is the Microsoft story all over again.
Invite-only creates hype around your product. Google wants people to Tweet and post on Facebook: "I got an invite into the new Google Maps!". Simple marketing.
I think this type of thing risks tiring people out though. There are only so many times people can get excited about getting an invite to a new service before it feels like chasing old highs.
Facebook has consistently done the same thing with all of their new features (Graph Search, Timeline, etc). I fail to see why this is so egregious?
It's the disconnect between what Google is (the 800 pound gorilla that can roll out a new product like an appliance manufacturer can roll out a new toaster), and how Google sees itself (the brave disruptive startup launching something cool in private beta). It's the same disconnect that we know from Microsoft, that couldn't see itself as the monopolist they were, because their self-image was still that of the little…
You sound very biased against Google. In that particular case, I think the new Maps is not ready for prime launch yet. I think two things tend to prove that this is the truth: no Google Maps API are available for this new Maps, the presenter (forgot his name) mentioned that they were not ready for prime time; also for other products announced today, they rolled them out right away (new Google+, new Google Music, etc.) so why would they not release this one?
Facebook has consistently done the same thing with all of their new features (Graph Search, Timeline, etc). I fail to see why this is so egregious?
It's the disconnect between what Google is (the 800 pound gorilla that can roll out a new product like an appliance manufacturer can roll out a new toaster), and how Google sees itself (the brave disruptive startup launching something cool in private beta). It's the same disconnect that we know from Microsoft, that couldn't see itself as the monopolist they were, because their self-image was still that of the little…
and how Google sees itself (the brave disruptive startup launching something cool in private beta).
What? Since when has launching a product to a small audience and gathering feedback been something that only a startup is allowed to do?
I don't really think it was stale or stagnated exactly. You probably saw recently a few posts about how much work goes into them and why exactly they're better than Apple's or Microsoft's. It's very subtle and fundamental stuff. They didn't change much, it's true, but that's because the competition was so bad and they leapfrogged them by so much at the beginning. We'll see how the new look works in action - I can't s…
In comparison to http://here.com Google Maps was stale.
I beg to differ. That map style looks worse than Google Maps to me.
This is a straight up attack on yelp, targeting local commerce. Their goal is that instead of searching yelp for massage therapy, you search google maps. That sort of query is extremely valuable (trust me - my company pays for it every day). It makes a lot of business sense - it's probably the most lucrative way to monetize maps, and get people to use google reviews more.
Yelp built a community around top reviewers and incentives people to review. Google Places doesn't really offer incentives for people to review or to spend time reviewing.
Invite-only creates hype around your product. Google wants people to Tweet and post on Facebook: "I got an invite into the new Google Maps!". Simple marketing.
I think this type of thing risks tiring people out though. There are only so many times people can get excited about getting an invite to a new service before it feels like chasing old highs.
I clicked the link before looking at the comments. I saw "request an invite", sighed, and hit the back arrow.
I'm tired of Google request-an-invites, and it was a reaction completely independent of the comments here (which I hadn't yet seen).