

How Google Decides to Pull the Plug - yagibear
http://www.nytimes.com/2009/02/15/business/15ping.html

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JabavuAdams
> Lively, Google’s entry into three-dimensional virtual worlds, was publicly
> unveiled last July. Four months later, when the company decided to close it,
> only 10,000 people had logged into the service over the previous seven days.
> That was well below the targets set by Google’s quarterly project review
> process, and far behind Second Life from Linden Lab, which had about half a
> million users in a similar period.

Hmm. I'd be happy with that. I wonder how much it costs to run the service? I
don't need to kill Second Life to be successful.

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jacquesm
excellent point! What is a success to a smaller operator would be a failure
for a much larger one.

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tokenadult
"With services that don’t generate much cash, the company looks less at money
spent than at measures of usefulness and the opportunity cost of devoting
employees to one project over another."

That seems reasonable. If there are multiple projects in play, not investing
staff time into the most promising projects is indeed an opportunity cost.

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jacquesm
Everything comes down to marketing given equal functionality, if google would
use its own homepage to promote these projects they would 'fly' regardless.
What they do is actually quite smart, they check to see if projects can 'hold
their own', and only if they can they get added to the shortcuts.

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mkuhn
I think the article is interesting but mostly stating the obvious: Projects
that do not make money and aren't able to garner a top spot in their
sector/niche get killed. What I would find much more interesting is an article
how Google chooses the companies it buys.

