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Google’s “20% time,” which brought you Gmail and AdSense, is now as good as dead

(qz.com)
581 points antr | 4 comments | 16 Aug 13 12:09 UTC | HN request time: 0.642s | source
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mattstocum ◴[16 Aug 13 12:45 UTC] No.6223613[source]▶
And how many failed projects came out of 20% time?
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1. anjc ◴[16 Aug 13 12:48 UTC] No.6223629[source]▶
They probably didn't lose as much money as they're gaining from the successful ones
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2. johnward ◴[16 Aug 13 12:54 UTC] No.6223657[source]▶
I'm sure the gains from AdSense and Gmail alone outweigh anything they lost. Also engineers can stay happy if they work on things they like more often. So there could be an implied cost (by losing employees) to not allowing 20% time. I'll also add that it's almost impossible to stay focus on 1 thing 8 hours+ a day for 5 days a week. Even if there is no 20% time I'm sure they still lose time to unproductive activities. Maybe 20% time actually captured some of the time that would otherwise be spent browsing the web or making pointless comments like this on HN.
3. nfoz ◴[16 Aug 13 13:00 UTC] No.6223681[source]▶
It's not as if Google never would have thought to make a web-based mail if someone didn't do it in their 20% time...
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4. toyg ◴[16 Aug 13 13:36 UTC] No.6223883[source]▶
At the time, Google was a search engine, period.

Expecting Google to build a webmail system would have been like expecting Twitter to release an accounting package.