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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 | 3 comments | 16 Aug 13 12:09 UTC | HN request time: 0.441s | source
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donw ◴[16 Aug 13 12:59 UTC] No.6223679[source]▶
Few people remember it, but the same thing happened at HP. It used to be that HP engineers were expressly given Friday afternoons and full access to company resources to just play with new ideas. Among other things, this led to HP owning the printer market.

Then "professional" management came in and killed the proverbial goose. They had to focus more on the "bottom line". To do what was easy to measure and track, rather than what was necessary for the next step of the company, and now HP is a mere shadow of its former glory -- directionless and bleeding.

3M and Corning have largely avoided this fate, but it seems that Google won't. This should make a lot of entrepreneurs happy, as there will continue to be a lot of top-down management-driven products that, if history shows, will continue to be market failures. Yet somehow, I'm incredibly sad, as it seems that too many companies go down this road.

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1. shin_lao ◴[16 Aug 13 14:17 UTC] No.6224099[source]▶
Apple would be a good counter-example to your:

This should make a lot of entrepreneurs happy, as there will continue to be a lot of top-down management-driven products that, if history shows, will continue to be market failures.

There's no rule to success.

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2. zeckalpha ◴[16 Aug 13 14:59 UTC] No.6224364[source]▶
Actually, Apple (1988-1998) is a perfect example.
3. Dogamondo ◴[16 Aug 13 15:45 UTC] No.6224697[source]▶
> There's no rule to success.

Amen. I think as HN readers we suck up so much info on a daily basis (I would guess so much more than the everyday public) and get confused so many ways on what is 'The right way' to do thing, 'The wrong ways to do things' and the '5n lessons you should learn to do things right'. But really, all that will change and become irrelevant when company x does things in way y. Then all the armchair experts and runaway copiers will wax philosophical, and no-one will know any better until the daring party actually does it, or completely bucks it.