Google Knows When to Hold 'Em, Knows When to Fold 'Em

Here's an interesting view on the way that Google explores new projects and sometimes pulls the plug. I thought there were a few interesting things about this article:

First, how many different projects is Google developing that I have never seen promotions for? It seemed to me that virtually every project that they recently killed had zero buzz. Lively, Dodgeball, Catalog Search, Notebook, and Jaiku - each of these projects had potential, but there was an obvious lack of awareness among consumers.

Second, I thought that it was interesting to think of each project at Google as being in competition for their engineers' 20% free time. This type of decision structure is very flat, but may mean that extra projects that are difficult or not sexy will be ignored.

http://www.nytimes.com/2009/02/15/business/15ping.html?pagewanted=all