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Google’s “20% time,” which brought you Gmail and AdSense, is now as good as dead

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Re: Google’s “20% time,” which brought you Gmail and AdSense, is now as good as dead

#61

Post by ferdo »

anxious wrote: post #27
ferdo wrote: post #11

I'd point out that Page and Brin predicted the course of their own search engine, and perhaps their own company, in 1998: “The goals of the advertising business model do not always correspond to providing quality search to users.” “We expect that advertising funded search engines will be inherently biased towards the advertisers and away from the needs of the consumers.” “Advertising income often provides an incentiv…

Way to hijack the thread with anti-Google propaganda ...

My post in fewer words: Page and Brin have wandered from their roots.

That's not "anti-Google propaganda". That's honest criticism from an old geek.

Re: Google’s “20% time,” which brought you Gmail and AdSense, is now as good as dead

#62

Post by threeseed »

api wrote: post #25
donw wrote: post #18

Few people remember it, but the same thing happened at HP. It used to be that HP engineers were expressly given Friday afternoons and full access to company resources to just play with new ideas. Among other things, this led to HP owning the printer market. Then "professional" management came in and killed the proverbial goose. They had to focus more on the "bottom line". To do what was easy to measure and track, rat…

It boggles my mind, given the big money involved, why so many people continue to bet huge sums of cash on the proven short-term penny-wise/pound-foolish idiocy of MBA-think. I mean sure-- if your company is under cash flow pressure you have to pinch pennies. You have no choice. Spreadsheet says so, and spreadsheet's the boss. But if you're not, you should be investing and thinking long term cause the other guys proba…

> I'm convinced its pure cronyism and ass-covering.

I'm convinced it's not.

Betting on the long term at the expense of the short term is incredibly hard. Even the smartest people in the world will panic (and in some cases pivot) when doubts start to creep into their mind. I am sure all of us have been in a similar situation. It's always easy to judge from the outside but on the inside those decisions are tough, lonely, scary and rarely to do with just covering your own ass.

Re: Google’s “20% time,” which brought you Gmail and AdSense, is now as good as dead

#63

Post by api »

snorkel wrote: post #38

No companies should be offering 20% time anyway because it's a difficult promise to keep between crunch schedules and need to keep work between teams synchronized. Some companies also have creative interpretations of "20% time" as "We offer 20% time: you can spend 20% of your time doing whatever marketing needs you to do" turning the whole notion of 20% time into a disincentive. Hack Days work much better. Easier to…

If you have to crunch a lot, your manager has poor time management skills.

Re: Google’s “20% time,” which brought you Gmail and AdSense, is now as good as dead

#64

Post by toyg »

nfoz wrote: post #20
anjc wrote: post #9

Earlier quoted context omitted.

They probably didn't lose as much money as they're gaining from the successful ones

It's not as if Google never would have thought to make a web-based mail if someone didn't do it in their 20% time...

At the time, Google was a search engine, period.

Expecting Google to build a webmail system would have been like expecting Twitter to release an accounting package.

Re: Google’s “20% time,” which brought you Gmail and AdSense, is now as good as dead

#66

Post by Anderkent »

api wrote: post #25
donw wrote: post #18

Few people remember it, but the same thing happened at HP. It used to be that HP engineers were expressly given Friday afternoons and full access to company resources to just play with new ideas. Among other things, this led to HP owning the printer market. Then "professional" management came in and killed the proverbial goose. They had to focus more on the "bottom line". To do what was easy to measure and track, rat…

It boggles my mind, given the big money involved, why so many people continue to bet huge sums of cash on the proven short-term penny-wise/pound-foolish idiocy of MBA-think. I mean sure-- if your company is under cash flow pressure you have to pinch pennies. You have no choice. Spreadsheet says so, and spreadsheet's the boss. But if you're not, you should be investing and thinking long term cause the other guys proba…

Whenever you see theoretically smart people acting in stupid ways you should consider incentives before deeming them idiots.

The prioritization of short term benefits is an obvious consequence of reward schemes that judge you based on yearly performance. There is little reason to invest in things that help the company long term if your pay depends on short-to-medium term results, unless you think your company might be going down and are fighting for job security.

Re: Google’s “20% time,” which brought you Gmail and AdSense, is now as good as dead

#68

Post by winter_blue »

> Six months after he took the reins, Page announced that Google would adopt a “more wood behind fewer arrows” strategy that would put more of Google’s resources and employees behind a smaller number of projects. This meant killing off Google Labs, which had previously been Google’s showcase for its experimental projects—many of them products of employees’ 20% time.

Guess who advised Larry Page to focus on a small number of projects? Steve Jobs.[1] It seems like Larry's acceptance of Jobs' advice has sabotaged Google. I'm no conspiracy theorist, but one does wonder if this was Jobs' secret intention.

[1] See the second quote in: http://www.edibleapple.com/2011/10/22/steve-jobs-advice-to-l...

Re: Google’s “20% time,” which brought you Gmail and AdSense, is now as good as dead

#69

Post by asandweech »

api wrote: post #25
donw wrote: post #18

Few people remember it, but the same thing happened at HP. It used to be that HP engineers were expressly given Friday afternoons and full access to company resources to just play with new ideas. Among other things, this led to HP owning the printer market. Then "professional" management came in and killed the proverbial goose. They had to focus more on the "bottom line". To do what was easy to measure and track, rat…

It boggles my mind, given the big money involved, why so many people continue to bet huge sums of cash on the proven short-term penny-wise/pound-foolish idiocy of MBA-think. I mean sure-- if your company is under cash flow pressure you have to pinch pennies. You have no choice. Spreadsheet says so, and spreadsheet's the boss. But if you're not, you should be investing and thinking long term cause the other guys proba…

I'm pretty sure he burns the money in The Dark Knight, not Batman Begins.

Re: Google’s “20% time,” which brought you Gmail and AdSense, is now as good as dead

#70

Post by LanceH »

peacemaker wrote: post #47
marknutter wrote: post #26

Earlier quoted context omitted.

But then what's stopping Google from just turning around and buying their startup if it looks promising?

That was my first thought but then I realized that no-one can force them to sell to Google

They can't force in the gun-to-the-head sense, but they can "force" a startup to sell with the threat of throwing a billion dollars at the problem themselves.
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