With Google’s subpar launches over the last year I’m starting to wonder if I’ve been criticizing their experimental services too prematurely? Overzealous expectations, perhaps? Google is at fault for helping to further the meme that beta is launch-worthy, but why can’t they experiment? If this beta as launch-worthy trend continues we may see the day when companies actually start charging for beta software. Some cynics believe companies like Microsoft have been doing this already.

Shrikant Joshi has a detailed post challenging what’s going on at Google with all the product launches and apparent loss of focus on search. Nathan points to an eWeek article that compares Google to 7-11.

7-11? Umm, a bit extreme comparison, don’t you think? I don’t see Google hawking slurpees in exchange for some web service quite yet. Yes, they have shoveled their fair share of dung the last year or so, but 7-11? No.

Playing devil’s advocate somewhat here because I agree with a lot of the criticisms lodged against the Google with one major assumption: Google will make these permanent, serious competitive offerings.

We don’t know for certain what Google’s ultimate plans are for these lab offerings unless they tell us and even once we do, the market gets to decide on how popular these offerings will be. We simply cannot assume that every product launch will be as important and popular as Google search, Adwords/Adsense and Gmail. Don’t anybody tell me services like Froogle and the Google accelerator have hit prime time. Google would like everything they experiment on to be a hit, but the truth is that for every hit, the web is littered with tons of misses. Just look at the many doomed startups.

I’ve already written about the unequal and often undeserved amount of Google attention being attributed to rough and often uninspired product launches: stop the premature eGooglation, but it sure seems like the greater tech media (including blogs) has made every Google launch ‘official’ even when they clearly designate as “limited” such as with their new Spreadsheets. Isn’t a lab supposed to experiment and innovate? If they don’t do anything new then people will criticize them (rightly) for sitting on the money. Getting lazy. Just as Microsoft has been criticized in the past.

As a GOOG investor I want to see a busy, active and experimental labs department. I shouldn’t expect that everything Google does will be worthwhile, useful or even relevant to my business and/or life. Not everything Microsoft does is but that doesn’t mean I’m not a customer and they should stop trying to innovate.

I’ll agree that most Google product launches are substandard these days but they seem to be following the throw it against the wall and see if it sticks rule to launching new products/services. Did you realize that half of their new product launches in the end of 2006 came from their employees 20% time?

Google’s China mess
Maybe I just feel for their situation in China. Seems by Sergey’s backtracking that they regret business decisions made with China. The BBC is reporting that China is blocking Google.com in favor of Google.cn:

In addition to Google, US companies Microsoft, Yahoo and Cisco Systems have also been accused of accommodating China’s demands on censorship in return for access to its huge internet market.

It seems like a no-win situation for doing business there. On one hand I understand that if you do business in China you need to follow Chinese laws [see: MSN China blogger smackdown: their country, their ballgame]. Americans may not believe in the way China does things, but it is still their country. From a political perspective, I’m growing weary of America trying to be the supercops of the world, policing and pushing our ways upon other countries. Yeah, we don’t want them getting nukes or committing genocide sure, but I think our government is being as overzealous as many tech journalists and bloggers are over Google new product/service launches.

A major experiment I want to see from Google
I know some are fearful of this and Google has said it’s not happening (not that it won’t ever happen), but I want to see a GoogleOS. Not some web-only piece of crap though, but a Google branded Linux variant that is as painless for non-techies to install as Mac and Windows. Let’s face it, Google is the only company out there with the strength to compete against Microsoft on the client side and I don’t think this would be the bad thing that some think.

Of course a GoogleOS would requires several features to be appealing to me:

- would need to be fully compatible Linux, not some crippled shell
- would need to offer clean install option devoid of extra and unnecessary crapware offerings
- would offer me free, ad-supported options or pay options without Google monitoring. I agree with Steve Ballmer that I don’t want to have ads alongside everything I do on my computer. And I really don’t want Google looking over my shoulder on everything we are doing on our computers. It’s a bit unnerving letting any one entity that much into your private space.
- would not force or limit me to using Google services

If this GoogleOS existed tomorrow — and I remain convinced some variant of this is coming someday — I’d install and start using right away. Would I dump Windows? Probably not, but I’m open to the concept, just as I was open to a competing browser when Firefox came along.

Google can and should experiment. So should we.

Did this post make you go hmm?

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