Why does Google failed some many of its products?
Google has a lot of talented engineers and good practice, everytime it build something, the news will get on it and spread the word quickly. However, many of its services/products never become profitable enough, and eventually closed down, just wondering why does it keep failing, even though some of its services are great in a way? For example, google glasses, google hire, google fibre, google+, etc. View the whole list here https://killedbygoogle.com/
Some projects are too ambitious and maybe not enough product focus
good engineering != good product
Shhhhh... you are not supposed to say that on blind. If only all the pesky managers, product managers and other useless function just stayed out of the way the engineers could finally write that beautiful code and take over the world. (For those who dont recognize- this is cynicism)
Try it all, fail at most, triumph at few
They’re big enough to try to expand into new markets and try new things.
Fail fast. If you believe in that principle, you will go a long way. That’s what GOOG does.
The principle is “If you have to fail, fail fast.” The reason behind the statement is opportunity cost. (Look it up if no ECON background.) Obviously, it’s a lot better not to fail.
Try new, fail slow. That's their operating philosophy. Lots of wishful thinking products.
Similarly to any successful company. Falling fast is part of success
Is there anything more culture specific though? Such as lack of hustle because of comfy margins from software?
Take Google Plus as an example. There were at least 4 different ways to unite people: groups, circles, squares and something else that I don’t remember. Very few engineers knew the difference between them and customers were obviously confused too. The main reason for that mess was that engineers couldn’t agree with each other branching new abstractions and making user experience awful. Bottom line is that culture rewards making yourself look smart over building great end product.
You’re being kind of a triangle
I would think the graveyard from hardware is a lot larger. Further, if you remove all items explicitly stated as Bets, and remove things that lost some press luster (fibre), you are left with few products that fail and an enormous amount that are completely stellar. What other company has 7 products with > 1 billion active users and many products with > $1 billion revenue
Facebook? Microsoft? ...
Trying to count the 7: Maps Gmail YouTube Search Android Chrome ??
Poor project management culture