As many of you know, I’m a big believer in Google (GOOG, Financial) as a long term play because of the significant upside in many of its projects such as Google Fiber, Glasses, and so many other features. Recently however, I’ve been seeing another side of Google. In the era led by Larry Page, Google has adopted a “startup” mode where everything is happening much more quickly. Google is launching dozens of products/ideas and then terminating those that do not meet its “success criteria”. In theory, that certainly makes a lot of sense.
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Google will be killing off the product in July. It will be joining other former Google products such as iGoogle, Google Video, Google Wave, Google Buzz, etc. This is very upsetting to me but I do appreciate the head’s up and I understand the business decision.
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There is another consequence though…
When Google decides to launch new products such as Google Keep, a competitor to “Evernote”, it makes me pause. Should I start using this product knowing that a few months or years from now, Google could end up terminating it? Or should I stick with Evernote which is clearly committed to this product? Would I start using Google’s new same day shipping service? Or stick with Amazon or eBay which are more likely
The Other Side
What I’ve been discovering though is that there is a another side to this type of behavior. For several years now, I’ve been using a product that you may know: Google Reader. It helps me filter news (through a technology known as RSS) from about 100 different sites/blogs. RSS never truly made it mainstream but there are still a few million users from what I understand. Then.. Google made this announcement a few weeks ago:image credit
Google will be killing off the product in July. It will be joining other former Google products such as iGoogle, Google Video, Google Wave, Google Buzz, etc. This is very upsetting to me but I do appreciate the head’s up and I understand the business decision.
image credit
There is another consequence though…
When Google decides to launch new products such as Google Keep, a competitor to “Evernote”, it makes me pause. Should I start using this product knowing that a few months or years from now, Google could end up terminating it? Or should I stick with Evernote which is clearly committed to this product? Would I start using Google’s new same day shipping service? Or stick with Amazon or eBay which are more likely
