The Google X moonshot factory is struggling to get products out the door
1–10 of 71 posts
Re: The Google X moonshot factory is struggling to get products out the door
#2This article frames it in part as due to the Alphabet reshuffle, but hasn't it always been this way? Has X been decreasing in effectiveness recently, or were they just always there to be Sergey's batcave?
Re: The Google X moonshot factory is struggling to get products out the door
#3If 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?
Re: The Google X moonshot factory is struggling to get products out the door
#4It 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.
Re: The Google X moonshot factory is struggling to get products out the door
#5The title feels like an oxymoron. I would assume the reason for spinning out a "moonshot" division is that if some projects fail, at least they are not part of the main division. Perhaps some of these projects are not the type that can ship an MVP?
Re: The Google X moonshot factory is struggling to get products out the door
#6If 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?
Yes - this is the VC model. Hitting 100-1000x results every once in a while, as opposed to lots of 3-10x results.
Re: The Google X moonshot factory is struggling to get products out the door
#7It 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?
Re: The Google X moonshot factory is struggling to get products out the door
#8If 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 far as I know, its only marginal success to date has been Glass. I don't think it's unreasonable to say that X's success rate so far has been lower than many people expected.
Re: The Google X moonshot factory is struggling to get products out the door
#9If 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…
It may be true that it's harder now to make those kinds of leaps than it was in the 1970s though.
Re: The Google X moonshot factory is struggling to get products out the door
#10[deleted]