

Just how many failed startups can Google afford? - manish_modi
http://www.simplyzesty.com/google/22176/

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benologist
While the money's pouring in at millions a minute they can afford as many as
it takes to find a winner, even if being a giant corporation sabotages some of
their attempts.

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petervandijck
Exactly, a few employees + dollars to try some things out is nothing.

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esrauch
It hurts their brand image though. If Google's only products were Search,
Android, Gmail, Adsense, Youtube, Docs, Chrome, and Maps then some new product
they announced would probably have everyone assuming its going to dominate
it's field and signing up to use it instantly.

Since they have had more high profile failures than high profile launches in
the last 5-ish years, that leads to people not really trusting that any new
product launch is going to be a winner. People having a "wait and see"
mentality works fine for certain products (gmail, maps, news, etc would both
be fine in that area) but it really kills anything that have social aspects
(or economy of scale type products) like Buzz, Wave, Places, etc. These things
just have significantly lower value if your IRL social network isn't using the
product.

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petervandijck
Even they can't predict all winners. So the alternative is stagnation.

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russell
Successful roll-out of self-driving cars ought to pay for one or two. Even if
they gave away the software, they could probably make billions per year from
licensing content like maps and streetviews or the patent portfolio. Or
license the software for a few bucks or a few hundred bucks per car. At $100
per car that would be on the order of $10B. And think of all that ad revenue
from commuters who dont have to watch the road.

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cskau
I think a bit part of it is really talent acquisition. Sure the technology in
these startups is awesome, but from Google's perspective what they're really
buying are the people who made it in the first place.

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Bo102010
If I were speaking for Google, I would reply: If all of our experiments
succeeded, it would mean we are too conservative in what experiments we
conduct.

