No, they left it to rott. No innovations, no new strategy, no new leadership, no new bold moves. Nothing. If G+ was startup outside Google we would have ripped it off for not even pretending to compete.
Social is absolutely the most important space for Google, even more so than cloud. FB is eating up large chunk of their ad money and putting biggest chunk of content out of their reach. For a company out to organize world's information, this is unthinkable. And this is a company with $100B in bank, accumulation of largest talent pool, ability to attract the best. And it's not that FB is perfect and strongest at this point.
There is no "cutting losses" in tech when product category is this important. It takes years of struggle, experimentation, patience and competition to win. They gave up within an year after G+ release, left it on "maintenance mode" and now finally kissing good bye.
To me, Google has lost its charm as company that makes big bets and goes all-in until they win. Now they are company which does half-assed product and if they don't see traction right away, they cut off the oxygen and then just kill it. There is little or no reflections, learning and applying it to do course corrections.
After Larry Page arrived at the scene and flew out to his Caribbean island on extra-extended vacations, the company has failed to produce any big new product category. Eric Schmidt was able to start new product category virtually every year and become undisputed leader in it. That wasn't coincidence or luck but sheer drive to win. For example, in maps they had to invest huge amount of money with multi-year milestones and constant innovations to displace existing players.
Social is absolutely the most important space for Google, even more so than cloud. FB is eating up large chunk of their ad money and putting biggest chunk of content out of their reach. For a company out to organize world's information, this is unthinkable. And this is a company with $100B in bank, accumulation of largest talent pool, ability to attract the best. And it's not that FB is perfect and strongest at this point.
There is no "cutting losses" in tech when product category is this important. It takes years of struggle, experimentation, patience and competition to win. They gave up within an year after G+ release, left it on "maintenance mode" and now finally kissing good bye.
To me, Google has lost its charm as company that makes big bets and goes all-in until they win. Now they are company which does half-assed product and if they don't see traction right away, they cut off the oxygen and then just kill it. There is little or no reflections, learning and applying it to do course corrections.
After Larry Page arrived at the scene and flew out to his Caribbean island on extra-extended vacations, the company has failed to produce any big new product category. Eric Schmidt was able to start new product category virtually every year and become undisputed leader in it. That wasn't coincidence or luck but sheer drive to win. For example, in maps they had to invest huge amount of money with multi-year milestones and constant innovations to displace existing players.