Re:Leaving Google
by username90 on Tuesday July 06, 2021 @04:25AM
(#27745514)
It is really hard to do though. Google tried to do it, but when you reward middle managers for innovation you get a lot of half baked projects soon to be shut down, like current Google. Or if you reward them for stability as Google is increasingly doing then innovation stops almost completely.
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Didn’t Google pull it off in the beginning? If I remember correctly, some major successes like Google Earth came out of Google’s famous 20% policy. I’m not sure what changed since then. Maybe it’s not something that scales easily?
Re:Leaving Google
by bryanrasmussen on Tuesday July 06, 2021 @06:05AM
(#27746232)
It's true that there were some early notable 20% projects https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/20%25_Project#Notable_projects
Google Earth was acquired. Formerly Keyhole, IIRC.
Gmail was an acquisition, Google Maps was an acquisition, Android was an acquisition, Google Docs were an acquisition, I'm actually having a hard time thinking of a major Google project that's not an acquisition except for Google Search and Google Ads (and even there, I think they acquired DoubleClick early on and that boosted their ads business a lot).
All but gmail. That was created in house by Paul Buchheit.
Ah, I thought it was based on an acqui-hire of Oddpost: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Oddpost