In terms of product development, perhaps Google would be better off implementing a Y-Combinator based model where 2 to 5 people work on products by themselves -- away from Google's offices. They'd do this anywhere they'd want -- living together in a house/apartment, working from coffee shops, etc. They'd have access to Google's resources if/when they'd need them (kind of like how YC now has significant resources to help out its companies -- e.g. TechCrunch for initial distribution), but would not be required to use them.
The ultimate metric for a web property is getting repeat users at scale, so that's the #1 goal.
But as you say, Google doesn't really suffer from this problem at least initially (they can always get a substantial amount of immediate users for any new product).
The problem is, are they products people want? Are they products that'll generate repeat users at scale?
I wonder if the people building products at Google are building things for themselves, or for what they think people want.
The best products are made with one user in mind, and that user is the maker.
It's funny, in a way, that people have a hard time putting the pieces together. They seem to "get" email, instant messaging, publicly editable documents, wikis, blogs, "related links" sidebars and so on...
(I've never used an X-box; by "get it right" I mean "get popular.")
Which probably just means acquiring talent and company once someone else starts to hit it big.
http://www.labnol.org/wp/images/2008/02/social-networks-popu...
Edit: see, for example: http://cybergyaan.blogspot.com/2010/05/orkut-vs-facebook.htm...
In 2003, Google offered to purchase the social network Friendster, but the offer was declined by that company. Google then internally commissioned Orkut Büyükkökten to work on a competing independent project. The result was Orkut. The product launched on January 24, 2004.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Orkut#History_of_orkut
(If it isn't clear from that quote, Orkut Büyükkökten was a Google employee)
yeah on Google's every attempt to be social they didn't success well, but UX researcher (Paul Adams) at Google have some good thoughts on online social hubs. seems very interesting. would we ever see such Real Life Social Network from Google or any others?
Link: http://www.slideshare.net/padday/the-real-life-social-networ...
I am aware that some operational transformation is used in docs, however the usage scenario is different: collaboration is not the default use case and the number of collaborators would be smaller than in a wave, where the default use case is many waves with many participants.
They may have used some of their technology in Google Docs. However, they could have refined the Google wave model more. Instead, they hyped it up, and then quickly dumped it.
IE, GMail, iPhone...
Or, restricting to websites: GMail, G cal, G reader
I know many ffb users are already feeling frustrated with latest FB initiatives as they simply need place to stay in touch with friends and some of them would be happy to switch to something like "Facebook classic".
Besides that FB is doing great in exploring "what is SOCIAL"(how it works/how to make money out of it etc), but someone yet has to tell me what would REALLY stop other followers to copy all the best results once they approach their maximum(both in terms of product and growth challenges for company). I heard a lot of "Google just dont get it", "why GGL cant build X/Y", "social must be in your DNA" noise but someone has to explain why they absolutely cant do something IF they really need/want it. And I am not taking Wave as a proof, as it just shows me that GGL still has balls for serious decisions(and i count both starting and stopping something BIG as a major achievement)
Something tells me that this is just the beginning...
However, the cases where installed base is relevant is a serious failure. Wave and Buzz come to mind.
As I understand it, the original Where 2 product was a desktop app, much like what became Google Earth, and not all that groundbreaking because satellite-imagery desktop mapping apps have been around since the mid-1990s. Google Local, meanwhile, was a search product, much like the current Local Universal search experience.
When Where2 was acquired, there was a flurry of interest in how to get that beautiful satellite imagery and user experience onto the Web, where the rest of Google's products were, and that's how Google Maps was born.
The problem of getting users is often one that defines a site, when you don't have that problem it becomes a battle to stop users leaving to better more "mature" pastures. I think the next big social site (if there ever is one) will be a no-name small-gone-big site, but even then with how everyone (users) is about social now (they want to be instantly in on the next big thing) I doubt that can happen. I think that maybe Facebook is the end of social sites, which feels strange and ridiculous to say, but maybe.
Google will never "get" social, there is nothing to get.
Edit: in fact I think a great example of this is Google Wave. It was a fantastic product for a variety of tasks, project management was one, yet Google pitched it as the "next big thing" to users so they all joined with ridiculous expectations of what it was and wasn't and now look what happened... Tumblr is another great example in the other direction, what the site is now is very community orientated, yet from the interviews I've seen with the founder (David something) it didn't seem as if this was intention from the get go, yet users used the site like that and so they adapted and enabled users to use it like that. Now look, they're huge. Does anyone know of any products launched by big companies (Google, Microsoft etc.) that did go big? I can't think of any off hand, would be interesting to look at how they grew and developed.