Links courtesy of Slashdot: an interview with Marissa Mayer, and an overview of Google’s successes/failures in launching new products in the last few years. This latter article also features quotes by Ms. Mayer.
This is the worst interview with a Google employee I have come across so far — Ms. Mayer comes across as naive and ignorant of the technology she is selling. Her answers are poorly worded (‘the invitation model’, the whole ‘Los Diego’ thing to describe mashups, ‘we rely on our own logs’) and betray a lack of confidence (the answer about people over-estimating impact, ‘including myself’) that is worrisome in a salesperson.
Her comment here that they expect 60-80% of products to fail is nothing short of amazing. First, an expectation like that invites failure and that is surely not Google’s aim, especially given that its products are not failing because of a lack of demand, but because their competitors are killing them (think MySpace and Facebook over Orkut; Yahoo! Finance over Google Finance; eBay over Froogle). Second, given that she’s a marketing person, you’d hope she’d have the sense to put a more positive spin on things.
Google’s built its reputation on being a team of specialised geeks who really know their technology and prioritise this expertise above everything else. Ms. Mayer does not do well to extend that reputation here.
On the subject of Google, it has to be said that their new products aren’t doing brilliantly. They’ve done a great job in the last few years setting trends (Gmail, Google Maps), but other than AdSense, they haven’t come up with a single major rainmaker. Oh, and things aren’t likely to improve any time soon either — the open API movement Google championed with GMaps has been picked up by Yahoo!, who are doing some really impressive work, opening all their products up to developers. (Sidebar: I think the Yahoo! Travel API rocks. Travel websites were the one big Web 2.0 hole a few months ago, but now suddenly there seem to be plenty of really excellent apps out there. So much for the millions I was going to make off my brilliant travelogues-on-a-GMap website…). And yes, I agree wholeheartedly that Google doesn’t really have anything to fear — their lead in search is untouchable right now, and as long as that’s there, their advertising revenues aren’t going anywhere either. And let’s face it, that’s their bottom line.
Still, stockholders are easily thrown, and you better believe there’s going to be a lot of selling at some point soon unless Google starts to win its markets with products that actually contribute revenues. With the IPO a distant memory, the monetary benefits of working at Google are much more in line with industry standards, so they could conceivably have trouble attracting and retaining top talent if they don’t hit a few balls out of the park. There have to be some queasy employees at Mountain View praying Google Checkout comes through.
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