How Google Decides To Cancel a Project

The New York Times is running a story about the criteria involved when Google scraps one of their projects. While a project's popularity among users is important, Google also examines whether they can get enough employees interested in it, and whether it has a large enough scope — they prefer not to waste time solving minor problems. The article takes a look at the specific reasons behind the recent cancellation of several products. "Dennis Crowley, one of two co-founders who sold Dodgeball to Google in 2005 and stayed on, said that he had trouble competing for the attention of other Google engineers to expand the service. 'If you're a product manager, you have to recruit people and their "20 percent time."' ... [Jeff Huber, the company's senior vice president of engineering] said that Google eventually concluded that Dodgeball's vision was too narrow. ... Still, Google found the concepts behind Dodgeball intriguing, and early this month, it released Google Latitude, an add-on to Google Maps that allows people to share their location with friends and family members. It's more sophisticated than Dodgeball, with automatic location tracking and more options for privacy and communication."

Comments

But will this work in your company?

[BadAnalogyGuy]

Google has the benefit of having a lot of employees, a lot of goodwill, and a lot of money, so when it takes the "throw shit at the wall and see what sticks" business strategy, things have a way of working out for them.

But would this work for anyone else? Maybe Apple.

Re:But will this work in your company?

[91degrees]

It's what they call a cash cow. Large segment of the market, not a lot of growth. Piling more money into the market isn't going expand it a lot so it makes more sense to take the cash generated and invest it in other products. Apple are in a similar position with the iPod (The mp3 player market is still expanding but not as much as when the original ipod was released), and so are Microsoft with Windows.

It's pretty much 101 business strategy stuff.

Re:But will this work in your company?

[Fat Cow]

This _should_ be a cash cow for the shareholders. If these companies can't invest this money profitably then they are morally obligated to return it to the shareholders.

Re:But will this work in your company?

[mysterons]

Google has the benefit of having a lot of employees, a lot of goodwill, and a lot of money, so when it takes the "throw shit at the wall and see what sticks" business strategy, things have a way of working out for them.

But would this work for anyone else? Maybe Apple.

One problem with grading projects by how popular they are internally is that flashy projects get chosen over boring, less obvious but quite possibly equally important ones.

An example: who would want to work on infrastructure which is never directly visible to the outside world?

Re:But will this work in your company?

[Supergibbs]

No, Apple might do something similar but afterwards takes whatever sticks and makes it pretty, strips out any advanced features and wraps the whole thing in proprietary crap

Re:But will this work in your company?

[stevey]

An example: who would want to work on infrastructure which is never directly visible to the outside world?

Me, but that's probably why I'm mostly a sysadmin only part-time programmer.

Without the presence of a good infrastructure you can't have nowhere for the flashy stuff to be developed/hosted/placed.

Re:But will this work in your company?

[The End Of Days]

When people use the phrase "true morals," I reach for my shotgun.

Re:But will this work in your company?

[Anonymous Coward]

It's just that Apple fanboys have a poor memory of the bad shit. Evidence: Apple TV.

Nevermind most years after the adoption of PowerPC and before the introduction of the iPod.

Re:But will this work in your company?

[rmerry72]

Without the presence of a good infrastructure you can't have nowhere for the flashy stuff to be developed/hosted/placed.

Very, very true. Which is why most people prefer other people work on the infrastructure. Own culture idolizes those that do the flashy stuff and gives little credit to those that do the hard invisible stuff, and so everybody wants to do the flashy stuff in order to be idolized. Most people would prefer to be racing car drivers than car mechanics, even racing car mechanics.

That's sad, cause I find the most joy in solving the hard problems that nobody ever hears about. How boring to be a racing car driver, I say. Any moron can drive around a track, as long as I make the car go fast and handle well enough.

Re:Recruit?

[SerpentMage]

You know I have a product that is doing very well, and I am hoping to be bought out. Though if it does not I will have enough clients. But I digress...

If say Google were to buy me out and the success of this product depended on whether or not I could recruit engineers I would say screw it!

Google would have bought me out so I would have my money. And if Google is too stupid to do anything with the investment its their problem, not mine.

I mean so I could work there twiddle my thumbs surf, and do nothing until I could leave...

Personally I never thought too much of the Program Manager approach. Lends itself to be less focused in my opinion.

I have found that the best companies have REALLY good visionaries who say, "lets do this, and if you don't like it its your problem not mine." Yes many companies fail, but there are many who do quite well as a result of it.

Re:Recruit?

[Anonymous Coward]

You don't get my point do you?

Why on earth is Google buying a company that it will not use? If I was a shareholder of Google I would be bleeding furious at the waste of money.