After monopolizing search with a momentous IPO in 2004, Google has launched hundreds of different products. It’s been a roller coaster ride of experiments, and this was only possible by riding on its flagship’s success. Google’s strong developer culture means it loves to release whatever it’s hacking on to see what sticks. This may or may not change with the recent demise of Labs.
We discovered there’s been a total of about 251 independent Google products since 1998 avoiding add-on features and experiments that merged into other projects), and found that 90, or approximately 36% of them have been cancelled. Awesomely, we also collected 8 major flops and 14 major successes, which means that 36% of its high-profile products are failures. That’s quite the coincidence! NOTE: We did not manipulate data to come to this conclusion. It was a happy accident.
Google is in the business of failure, and it’s quite possible that if it weren’t for these 8 fails, the other 14 wouldn’t have came to be.
The benefits of Google’s Beta Culture
By consistently launching in beta for most of its products, Google experiences a smaller press storm than companies like Apple receive after embarrassing mistakes. Also, Google’s experimental nature helps curate new ideas and empowers users to decide what they really want — a very democratic approach that has clearly worked well in the past 12 years.
The problem with failing professionally
While launching tons of experiments has its benefits, it also takes a beating on adoption. Google’s abundant, low profile launches get the attention of the tech community, but often fail to catch on with the majority of other users. And if users decide to give a service an early try, there’s a decent chance they’ll be shut out later on. Lastly, having a giant roster of products distracts attention from the best of the best.
Larry Page (Google CEO and co-founder) just officially killed off Labs, and I can’t decide if this is a good thing. Google’s tradition of experimenting won’t go away, but “slimming down” the roster should help make the best products better. Labs has led to some really successful developments, and helped create the Google that many people love.
Check out this infographic we whipped up on Google’s Business of Failure:
Cancellations: Answers, Audio Ads, Base, Blogger Web Comments (Firefox), Browser Sync, Catalogs, Click-to-Call, Dashboard Widgets, Deskbar, Desktop, Dictionary, Directory, Google Pack, Dodgeball, Free Search, Gadgets, Gears, GOOG-411, Hello, Image Labeler, Jaiku, Joga Bonito, Lively, Local, Mashup Editor, MK-14, Music Trends, Notebook, Pack, Page Creator, Personalized Search, Photos Screensaver, PowerMeter, Public Service Search, Rebang, Related Links, Ride Finder, SearchMash, Send to Phone, Shared Stuff, Sidewiki, Spreadsheets, University Search, U.S. Government Search, Video Player, Voice Search, Web Accelerator, Writely, X, Health, Labs, Notebook, Wave, Body, Fast Flip, Tashkeel, Browser Size, Art Project, City Tours, Google Breadcrumb, Squared, Realtime Mytracks, Script Converter, Aardvark, Sets, News Timeline, Places Directory, Google Talk Guru, Julia Map, App Inventor
Active: Android, Chrome OS, Google TV, AdWords Editor, Chrome, Earth, Gmail Notifier, IME, Japanese Input, Picasa, Picasa Web Albums, Pinyin, Quick Search Box, Secure Access, SketchUp, Toolbar, Visigami, Blogger Mobile, Google, Calendar, Docs, Gmail (App), iGoogle, Latitude, Maps Navigation, Mobilizer, Google News, Offers, Orkut, Picasa Web Albums (App), Product Search, Reader, Wallet, Books (App), Maps (App), Music (China), Music Beta by Google, Reader, Sync, Talk, Translate, Voice, Youtube, Youtube Remote, Dashboard, Takeout, AdMob, AdSense, AdWords, Adwords Express, Certification Program, DoubleClick, DoubleClick for Publishers, DoubleClick for Publishers Small Business, Grants, TV Ads, Website Optimizer, 3D Warehouse, Apps, Blogger, Boutiques, Calendar, Docs, FeedBurner, Friend Connect, Gmail, goo.gl, Google+, Knol, Marratech e-Meeting, Orkut, Panoramio, Picasa Web Albums, Picnik, Profiles, Questions and Answers, Reader, Sites, SMS Channels, Speak To Tweet, Web Fonts, YouTube, App Engine, Closure Tools, Code, Dart, Go, OpenSocial, Page Speed, Swiffy, Web Toolkit, Webmaster Tools, Building Maker, Map Maker, Mars, Moon, Google Sky, Transit, Accessible Search, Alerts, Blog search, Books, Checkout, Code Search, Custom Search, Directory, Experimental Search, Finance, Groups, Hotpot, Image Search, Language Tools, Life Search, Movies, News, News Archive Search, Patent Search, Product Search, Scholar, SMS, Suggest, Video, Voice Local Search, Web History, Web Search, Analytics, Correlate, Fusion Tables, Insights, Refine, Trendalyzer, Trends, Zeitgeist, Mini, Nexus One, Nexus S, Search Appliance, Crisis Response, Public DNS, Earth Engine, Scripting Layer for Android, Web Application Exploits and Defenses, Google Transliteration, Google Moderator, Fetch as Googlebot, Flu Trends, Google Reader Play, Google Checkout Store Gadget, Public Data, DataWiki, Google goggles, Google Listen, Chrome Experiments, Shopper, Sky Map for Android, My Tracks for Android, WalkyTalky, Open Spot, Intersection Explorer, Finance for Android
Writely wasn't really cancelled; it's part of Google Docs now.
I counted Docs and Calendar two times in active projects list.
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LikeAlan Moraes One could also argue about other cancelled products being failures since they have been successful first steps, before being reborn into newer products. For example: Buzz can be seen as the Google+ alpha preview, Browser Sync paved the way for today's Chrome sync feature and Google Gears allowed amazing in-browser features before HTML5 came in.
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Likesupercopter, it's still different. Writely wasn't shutdown because it was just moved to Google servers, neither Docs was a totally different product than Writely was. You clearly can see that Buzz and Google+ are two very distinct products.
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LikeGoogle code is listed as an active project, but it was recently discontinued, right?
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LikeAlessio Erasmus No, it's "Google Code Search" that has been discontinued (it was a search engine that searched inside open-source code libraries). "Google Code" is a very active platform for collaborative development.
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LikeI think that's exactly what keeps Google going. A culture to take risks, promote trials, acquire startups, integrate them into its culture and make Search ever more important. [[though i doubt the validity of my last point].
But i think the Search giant has grown too big and it probably does this experimentation to cut short its ballooning earnings.
Here's my list of 5 words every blogger should follow - http://t.co/qjBcZ2HJ
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Likewhen i saw the headline, i though this post would just be critical of Google. To roughly paraphrase Seth Godin: failing is better than not trying, no risk no reward, yada yada. The fact that a multi-billion dollar public company still publicly experiments, tries new things, takes risks and fails. This is a big part of Goolge's success and why they stand apart from most huge corporations. I hope this infographic also serves as a reminder to all of us not to fear failure if we want to succeed.
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LikeSimon Gerard Talking about failure is controversial. I'm looking at Google's success rate in products, which isn't very relative to expenses or profit.
Google's experimental nature keeps it looking young, and "not evil." I've always loved that about it.
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LikeAlthough I broadly agree that experimentation will be a great loss to the Google personality It has to be said that a few of the successes were not born out of labs or internal projects.
Youtube - bought when already very successful
Analytics - A reskin and limited version of existing analytics tool Urchin
Blogger - Again bought when already successful
And I'm sure some of the other products also fall into this acquisition rather than experimentation model
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LikeMartin Lee Gmail sorta came from labs...lol. You're right. Acquisition is almost at Google's core.
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LikeHuge +1 to Mike's comment.
The Nexus One has greatly raised the level and paved the way for high ends Android phones. And Nexus One owners are still today happy customers since they get all the Android updates without delays. Many owners of non-Nexus device would love that same treatment. It was a first attempt for Google to define Hardware in collaboration with manufacturers, and since they now keep doing that on regular basis it certainly was a success.
Google TV hasn't even been released outside America yet. The initial launch was possibly a failure, but the Honeycomb or Ice Cream Sandwich update will certainly be a re-born and possibly a worldwide "second" launch. Who knows where Google TV will be in a couple of years?
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LikeI would say it's too early to call Google TV a flop. Especially given the beta culture, you need to at least wait until version 2 before making a judgement. If people had passed judgement on Android 1.0 that would have been a major flop as well.
Also, the Nexus One was not a flop. It was never intended to be a major consumer device. It was designed (as all Nexus phones are) as a developer device, and as a guide towards certain features for hardware manufacturers. In that regard, it was definitely a success.
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LikeHarrison Weber I know what you mean, but Google TV sales have been abysmal at this point: http://www.wired.com/gadgetlab/2011/07/google-tv-not-selling/
Also, the Nexus One was a great phone, but some viewed it as a failed retail experiment for Google. But can experiments really fail?
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