Then why do it at all? What would possibly justify such a large investment of capital if Google didn't believe it to be a potentially nontrivial contributor of future revenue?
Cynical answer: Because at big tech companies culture leads them to believe they have to have a competing product in every new market rather than letting their "competitors" go unopposed. Occasionally it works out, but often you just get a ton of also-rans. The companies are so big a profitable that even complete failure barely moves the stock price.
Nobody is incentivized to point out the proverbial emperor has no clothes. Top execs have something they can point to as "innovation" for a few quarters. Lower leadership for the project has their kingdom expanded and probably comes out the other end better off career wise. I would imagine its most frustrating for the actual IC's and PM's who pour their lives into something that eventually just gets unceremoniously deprecated, but they get to cash some pretty good paychecks and it probably helps their careers as well.
How do you increase revenue/stock price in meaningful way without expanding into other markets?
Google does these half ass attempts with minimal risk. They could be a major player in cloud computing, IoT etc. Amazon is dominating these areas with Ring and AWS.
Because of how Google's internal performance evaluation works.
You need to ship and show user growth. You are effectively punished for making improvements and fixes that do not have a clear connection to user growth.
When you have Google's resources and talent, you probably need a reason not to do these kinds of things. If a product has a decent chance of generating revenue or building out consumer profiles or reaching a new demographic and doesn't undermine the ads business, it has a shot of being pursued.
For gaming, I bet you could make a strong case that Google needs another hook into younger users who will stop using Google search the second their phone changes default search engines. Kind of an insurance policy.
The psychological profiles of users that could be built are also kinda terrifying. Hopefully that's not a part of the business case for Stadia.
Finally there's a case to be made for synergy with Youtube and its efforts to compete with Twitch.
Exmoor|5 years ago
Nobody is incentivized to point out the proverbial emperor has no clothes. Top execs have something they can point to as "innovation" for a few quarters. Lower leadership for the project has their kingdom expanded and probably comes out the other end better off career wise. I would imagine its most frustrating for the actual IC's and PM's who pour their lives into something that eventually just gets unceremoniously deprecated, but they get to cash some pretty good paychecks and it probably helps their careers as well.
adrr|5 years ago
Google does these half ass attempts with minimal risk. They could be a major player in cloud computing, IoT etc. Amazon is dominating these areas with Ring and AWS.
dleslie|5 years ago
You need to ship and show user growth. You are effectively punished for making improvements and fixes that do not have a clear connection to user growth.
ballenf|5 years ago
For gaming, I bet you could make a strong case that Google needs another hook into younger users who will stop using Google search the second their phone changes default search engines. Kind of an insurance policy.
The psychological profiles of users that could be built are also kinda terrifying. Hopefully that's not a part of the business case for Stadia.
Finally there's a case to be made for synergy with Youtube and its efforts to compete with Twitch.
deegles|5 years ago
curiousllama|5 years ago
1) Old-school Waterfall: evaluate, commit, and then build (Tesla, Apple, 2000s MSFT are examples)
2) Spray and Pray: build, evaluate, and then commit (Facebook, Amazon are examples)
Google is 2
moron4hire|5 years ago
Lammy|5 years ago