why does it matter if the moonshot factory is getting products out the door or not?
The Google X moonshot factory is struggling to get products out the door
11–20 of 71 posts
Re: The Google X moonshot factory is struggling to get products out the door
#12If Google is really aiming as high as it says it is, you would expect the rate of successes to be fairly low. A true "moonshot" success - one that creates a whole new industry - every decade would still be a phenomenal success. Maybe we just need patience?
This depends on the goal of the projects. If it's pure R&D that doesn't have a requirement to transition to commercial use, then you are absolutely correct. I don't think that's the case here. Some percentage of projects has to transition it's technology or research into commercial use, otherwise what is the point? Google is a publicly traded company, I wouldn't be a happy stockholder if I knew they were blowing $1 billion a year and with very little to show for it.
One thing did jump out at me in this article.
Mike Cassidy, who stepped down from Loon, ran the team “like a fire drill,” a former employee said.
I read this as, "Leadership likes to change its mind about direction and focus ... constantly". That's a recipe for disaster. Focus is key. You need to find the right direction as quick as possible, then execute.
Re: The Google X moonshot factory is struggling to get products out the door
#13If Google is really aiming as high as it says it is, you would expect the rate of successes to be fairly low. A true "moonshot" success - one that creates a whole new industry - every decade would still be a phenomenal success. Maybe we just need patience?
Many people (myself included) would compare X in intent and setup to PARC from the 1970s. The latter managed the extraordinary feat of pushing out a major innovation on average about once every 2.5 years from 1970 to 2000. That's things like laser printing, OOP, Ethernet, etc. that went on to build industries or take existing ones in new directions. X, on the other hand, has been around for over 6 years now and as fa…
Their biggest success is probably Google Brain.
Re: The Google X moonshot factory is struggling to get products out the door
#14One of the problem might be the incentive/motivations are not match between Google and people who works in those moonshot projects.
* Even if the projects get 10, 100 millions $ in revenue / profit, it is meaningless compare to billions in profit from search. The folks in those projects are not likely to benefit significantly from it.
* The smart folks probably know it. If they join the project (self driving car), some of motives are to learn as much as possible using Google's resources, name, connections and set it up for their own next venture.
Re: The Google X moonshot factory is struggling to get products out the door
#15It seems obvious that it would be a struggle for them to ship products - they are "moonshots" after all. Reading this article makes me wonder if it was a good idea to put all of them into one division though. Even when you go in knowing a project is a long-shot it can be demoralizing when it fails. I can't imagine how hard it would be to work in a whole division of mostly failed projects.
Isn't a venture capital firm (even a good one) a business investing in mostly failed projects?
The difference is that those projects are spread out across different companies, as opposed to a single division in a single company.
Re: The Google X moonshot factory is struggling to get products out the door
#16I have been wondering if Google hasn't already lost the self driving race to Tesla. Google still drives a few test vehicles around and has totalled some 2.7 million km:
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Google_self-driving_car
Tesla has more than 100,000 model S driving around and in just 7 months their auto pilots have already surpassed the km driven by Google for the past 7 years by almost a factor 100 (roughly 200M km). That is real use in many places, situations and weathers, not just test drives in California.
I realise it's not apples to apples and that Google's cars may be more autonomous for now. But with the numbers stacked against it like that I doubt it will be long before Tesla's auto pilot is vastly superior.
As I see it, given the lack of a Google car, they will have to team up with a major car company to get enough cars out there. And that requires a more elegant hardware solution than what they currently put on the rooftops.
http://www.extremetech.com/extreme/231097-tesla-records-its-...
Re: The Google X moonshot factory is struggling to get products out the door
#17If Google is really aiming as high as it says it is, you would expect the rate of successes to be fairly low. A true "moonshot" success - one that creates a whole new industry - every decade would still be a phenomenal success. Maybe we just need patience?
Many people (myself included) would compare X in intent and setup to PARC from the 1970s. The latter managed the extraordinary feat of pushing out a major innovation on average about once every 2.5 years from 1970 to 2000. That's things like laser printing, OOP, Ethernet, etc. that went on to build industries or take existing ones in new directions. X, on the other hand, has been around for over 6 years now and as fa…
I dunno, given the public backlash, far from kickstarting a new industry, Glass killed face-mounted wearables stone dead. The word "glasshole" will probably stick around for longer, so there's that...
Re: The Google X moonshot factory is struggling to get products out the door
#18I think it would be so fun to work there, even with all this political stuff happening. I guess it's sort of like Google's internal "Y Combinator", where they try out a whole bunch of startup ideas and have practically unlimited funding.
Re: The Google X moonshot factory is struggling to get products out the door
#19If Google is really aiming as high as it says it is, you would expect the rate of successes to be fairly low. A true "moonshot" success - one that creates a whole new industry - every decade would still be a phenomenal success. Maybe we just need patience?
Many people (myself included) would compare X in intent and setup to PARC from the 1970s. The latter managed the extraordinary feat of pushing out a major innovation on average about once every 2.5 years from 1970 to 2000. That's things like laser printing, OOP, Ethernet, etc. that went on to build industries or take existing ones in new directions. X, on the other hand, has been around for over 6 years now and as fa…
The fruits might be hanging higher nowadays though.
Re: The Google X moonshot factory is struggling to get products out the door
#20why does it matter if the moonshot factory is getting products out the door or not?
Because everyone always has to be shipping and disrupting! Big Business! Product! Sales!
Who's to blame?!
Attention, Decision, Interest, Action. AIDA.
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