Re:Alphabet’s Sidewalk Labs Eyes Toronto for Its Digital City
by onion2k on Wednesday May 10, 2017 @03:38AM
(#14306508)
80% sounds quite high but I wouldn't be surprised if the number is around there. Google are big enough to take risks and try things that don't work out. There are 95 official Google products in the Wikipedia 'discontinued products' listing - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_Google_products#Discon..., but that's not very accurate in that it doesn't mention things have failed but are limping along, and it includes things that were discontinued but live on in other products (eg Wave merged with Docs).
It's not entirely unreasonable to suggest Google have 20 successful products for their ~95 discontinued ones though.. which would work out as 80% 'failed'.
Re:Alphabet’s Sidewalk Labs Eyes Toronto for Its Digital City
by lightbyte on Wednesday May 10, 2017 @08:44AM
(#14307715)
Google bought YouTube after it was already hugely successful. I don't think it makes the best example here.
Re:Alphabet’s Sidewalk Labs Eyes Toronto for Its Digital City
by deelowe on Wednesday May 10, 2017 @10:45AM
(#14308580)
I wouldn't characterize hemorrhaging money and facing lawsuits from all of major media players as being successful.
http://www.nbcnews.com/id/15196982/ns/business-us_business/t...
Most of Google's big projects are still alive today. Search, Gmail, Android, GSuite, Chrome, Drive, AdWords, YouTube, etc.
There are a few big projects that they shut down but most are smaller projects.
Do we want Google to just launch products that they will keep alive indefinitely whether it succeeds or not?
Should Google not have started its self-driving car initiative, Calico, Fiber? Yeah, Glass failed. So what?
Do you want a company to innovate? Have them try different things. You can't change the world by only doing things with 100% certainty.