Personally, I think Google should break itself up. It needs to treat it's search & ads business totally differently than it treats it's other "startup-ish" properties. These can/should be launched under different branding, or, like a startup, each could be launched under it's own discrete branding.
I'm not sure it really matters if a site is "developed by Googlers". Why do the users care? If Google is playing farovitism with results, then it's probably important to disclose that, but otherwise, just let startups be startups.
I completely agree in principle. I think this is the advice Clayton Christensen would give.
The example that comes to mind (and I may have some of the details wrong) is HP finally breaking through with DeskJet after stagnating in innovation by making the group _completely_ separate. They moved the group to a new location geographically and gave them huge amounts of autonomy to make something outside the bubble / group-think of their LaserJet juggernaut.
I have a personal example of this as well. I worked as a PM for a real estate software firm that owned 70%+ of the market for desktop software for real estate appraisers. 300+ employees with a lot of engineers. They decided to move into the real estate agent segment with a new product, and to avoid the group think and "our company's bread winner and primary focus is on X", they started a satellite office in another state. It was like a startup with occasional oversight from some investors and board. The corporate values were the same, but our autonomy allowed us to truly innovate.
> I'm not sure it really matters if a site is "developed by Googlers". Why do the users care?
brand matters a lot, especially when trusting a web app with private data is concerned.
more than that there's brand loyalty. i realize this is an extreme example, but i don't use dropbox because it's the kind of internet-feature i want under my google account, not somewhere else. i literally don't want any company other than google to succeed in that space.
Sounds interesting, one point of yours that resonates with me is the push to develop everything only on Google Products.
The big paradox that brings up is: If all internally developed projects must be developed Google-scale, on Google products, why are so many of Google's most successful products acquisitions rooted in non-Google products?
