Re:G is for Google
by magicalist on Monday August 10, 2015 @06:13PM
(#10037788)
Of course if we go back to the original question, Orkut and Reader were hardly "moonshots" in the first place (and Google Video was arguably just a standard project launch).
Google's own canonical example of a moonshot is Android. By that definition, Orkut and Reader qualify just fine.
Re:G is for Google
by magicalist on Tuesday August 11, 2015 @12:02PM
(#10042058)
> Google's own canonical example of a moonshot is Android
Is it?
> By that definition, Orkut and Reader qualify just fine
If everything is a moonshot, nothing is, etc.
AFAIK both projects were just 20% time projects scaled up to three or four people[1]. A "moonshot" is obviously a wishy-washy term, but opportunity for success doesn't seem to be sufficient to call something that.
[1] http://massless.org/?archive=2007/05/about-google-readers-bi...
> Is it?
Yes. They first used the word when referring to Andy Rubin's departure from Android.
If you watch a video on youtube today it's actually hosted on googlevideo.com or something (i know because uBlock). I assume they threw the youtube backend away when they bought it :) So in that sense google video is still alive, just a different name.
Reader was a failure according to Google itself, which closed it due to supposed lack of interest. Once again, if the decision to close it was an error by your criteria, then they failed.
The rest I would agree with.