A reminder that the opinions stated in this blog post are my own.
You may have seen the recent announcement from Google that they have ceased development of “Wave”.
Some have seen this as a failure on behalf of Google, or a bad misstep.
This article from Mashable.com is an example on the lighter side of the commentary.
I see it otherwise.
If a company is to truly innovate then it is bound to go into areas which are high risk – no risk, no reward – and as such the only “failure” will be the failure to learn from any experiments or projects that do not get into production.
I have no issues with Google’s approach as they attempt to innovate, and yes they will sometime do it in the full view of the public (& media) and yes the will sometimes have to call an end to the work. Not every company can afford to do this, but given Google’s current revenue per employee, stock price & profitability, who would want to argue with them about it ?
Google shouldn’t be criticised, they should be congratulated, because they have recognised that Wave is not viable. I expect that Google they will do a lessons learnt, include some good code & function in other projects & move on to spend their innovation $$’s elsewhere.
Thanks for reading
