
Let’s Celebrate Google’s Biggest Failures - AndrewWarner
http://searchengineland.com/lets-celebrate-googles-biggest-failures-48165
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tansey
Wave, Jaiku, Dodgeball, Answers, Buzz... there is a common theme here. Google
is a company run by engineers and their hiring process is designed to find
people who can solve problems. It's been said before, but Google is great at
panda tasks and horrible at lobster traps. [1]

The successful Google projects are ones that typically solve a serious
technical challenge in an elegant way. Sure there were map sites and email
services before Google Maps and Gmail, but Google redesigned them to work
elegantly so you could save yourself time and effort compared to the other
services. The same goes for web search, scholar search, product search, image
search, web-based office apps, and application hosting services. Google didn't
create these services, they just did them right.

However, building a site like Twitter or FourSquare, there's no real "problem"
per se. It's more about community, and that's something that Google just
doesn't do well because it's in direct contradiction to their entire mission
statement.

Google is great at enabling people to accomplish things. They fail at allowing
people to do nothing.

[1] [http://ifindkarma.posterous.com/pandas-and-lobsters-why-
goog...](http://ifindkarma.posterous.com/pandas-and-lobsters-why-google-
cannot-build-s)

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bad_user
Their problem I think is that they throw those products over the fence,
generate some initial interest, and then they just forget about them ... as if
they're good enough.

Those products weren't good enough, and yet they expect them to succeed
without incremental improvements?

How hard was for them to do what Twitter did? Now of course it's too late.

Also ... one reason Google Video failed was because the approval for uploaded
videos could have taken weeks, while on Youtube it was near instant. Youtube
also has a consumer facing design ... they should realize that the guidelines
working for their search engine cannot work for consumer-facing services
popular amongst teenagers.

~~~
SoftwareMaven
I think that is related to their engineering culture. "The product is done
when the code is done" instead of "The code is the first step to making a
product."

Technical founders should take note of that!

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SoftwareMaven
As a product manager, I'm not sure how I feel about doing SO much testing by
throwing code out at people and seeing what sticks to the wall. If feels like
a hammer problem ("All I've got at Google are a bunch of engineers, so if I
need to see what the market wants, I'll throw engineers at it.").

However (also from the product management perspective), it is always
impressive to see a company that effectively kills products. So many companies
hold onto lagging products because they are afraid of the negative impacts of
killing a product without ever doing the analysis of the negative impacts of
keeping the product.

~~~
vgurgov
i was thinking about the same thing. killing project is extremely tough,
although many underestimate this. So I am very impressed on how effectively
google does this.

another thing here is money. google is a public company that has to make
money. most of these companies they kinda lost (4sqr, twtr, you name it) yet
have to prove they really have business model, by making say 1% of what google
makes. and its never late for buyback as google is one of most active buyers
in SV MA market

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obiterdictum
I find it interesting how the attitude is different when a web startup fails
and Google fails.

I keep reading here how startups must try out as many different ideas as
possible: try an idea, fail early, learn from your mistakes, move on to the
next one. It's a normal process. Google, on the other hand, is not allowed to
fail. A failed Google project is somehow a "problem".

Google is essentially a huge startup farm. Why is the attitude so different?

~~~
pierrefar
Wall Street, or more accurately, Google is a public company with shareholders
demanding good results consistently. This is a very different game compared to
a startup.

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greyman
Google Notebook was actually a good product. I still don't understand why they
decided to kill it.

~~~
all
Almost certainly it was a matter of traction. This is, after all, one of the
main arguments for open source and owning your own code: You can run it as
long as you want it, independently of market pressures.

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webuiarchitect
There is a lot to learn; may be more for Google itself than anybody else.

I didn't like the post title, though. Celebrate others' failures?

~~~
robosox
The title is a reference by Google about how they "celebrate" their own
failures by calling them out both publicly and internally. Not meant to be
mean-spirited / schadenfreude-esque.

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danbmil99
lively!

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Ardit20
They're just as incompetent as everyone else then, not some sort of angel
gods!

I suppose however that the article illustrates a very good approach. Trial and
error. Some things will fail, some will work, you do not know until you try
and a company so big like google can afford to try. As the article makes it
clear there have been plenty - well I can only think of google maps and ok
maybe Android whatever that is - successful products.

They really should however focus on their core business which is search and
advertising.

~~~
tshtf
The core of IBM's business in the late 1970s was mainframes for large
businesses. Should they have stayed focused on that, and not on the consumer
PC market, or services today?

~~~
arman0
Their original business was typewriters and tabulating equipment. They should
have stuck with that :)

~~~
enf
The typewriter business was an acquisition! (Electromatic was the name of the
previously independent typewriter company.) Time clocks and scales were the
other original lines besides tabulating.

