Yes, as far as I could tell that was part of the Labs mission (this was between 2006 and 2010). The confounding factor at the time was that "labs" was one of about four different ways something went from idea into "production" (aka visible outside Google), a tremendous amount depended on the project manager you worked with. There were people who had been at Google long enough that they could get an idea from first successful build to production in a month, knocking down all the various stubs of process that were in the way (like Marissa's UI review). These folks were well regarded by the fact that they got a lot of stuff done. Pretty much anyone, with the right set of people, could ship nearly anything. The downside was that sometimes things that came out were not as baked as they might appear to someone on the outside.