Big bets, or the dark side of Google’s interest in global projects

The “x10” philosophy can be said to be in the DNA of Google. What does this simple and yet strange name mean? Instead of improving something by 10%, the company seeks to work on projects that are 10 times better than anything else.

“Most of my work is to get people to focus not only on things that are consistent,” said CEO Larry Page in an interview with the 2013 American magazine Wired.

According to the company's employees, one of the greatest advantages of working at Google is the ability to pursue high ideas instead of just trying to outperform the competition. In keeping with this position, the company launched incredibly ambitious projects. These include unmanned vehicles, balloons for distribution of the Internet, and magnetic nanoparticles that can examine the human body for diseases.
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In addition, the “x10” policy is also noticeable in the development of already established products of the company. For example, Gmail initially opens access for users to a store, the volume of which is 100 times more than any other product can offer. People who regarded Google solely as a search engine, such a move seemed unprecedented extravagance. Another example is Google Street View, which has captured more than 11.27 million kilometers of roads.

If we go back to the origins of the company, we’ll see that, initially, the Google search engine was a clear incarnation of the “x10” idea in the web annotation tool developed by Page as a dissertation project at Stanford. But, as it turned out, the frantic pursuit of lofty goals may also have a dark side.

“Avoiding reality” is not always what you need.

One of the company's former employees, who once held a high position in it, shared with reporters from the Business Insider news portal that Google’s 10 Commandments, promoted by senior executives of the company, including CEO Larry Page, have two sides. He says that, on the one hand, it gives incredible energy, but on the other, it can be completely paralyzing. According to him, Larry’s job is to point out things that you haven’t thought about before, so he has to move away from reality to some extent. When it comes to the realization of such ideas as smart contact lenses, common sense contradicts them. But, according to the former employee, applying logic to products that do not need it is dangerous.

For example, when Google was involved in the development of a remote control for an early version of Google TV, Paget believed that none of the prototypes was ambitious enough. Paige asked, “Why doesn’t he have a screen, in case you need to go to the bathroom, without looking up?” Why not add a tablet for a mouse or a keyboard? ”When the team tried to argue that the remote controls didn’t need these excesses, Page continued to promote more ambitious functions that no other controller could boast.



The company developed its first device with Google TV support in partnership with Logitech, and Page was not able to recapture the display, but the controller was still equipped with a keyboard and a large button for navigation. “It was monstrous,” says a former Google employee: “No one could understand this remote control. But Paige is a founder, and you can't just tell him that he's crazy. ” As a result, Google TV did not enjoy success until it was much later processed into a simpler Chromecast device.

When there is too much good

And this is not the only example of when a product was burdened with a number of unnecessary functions. Other former employees of the company filed several more examples:

• Glass . The failure of the Google Glass project was partly due to the fact that management was not satisfied with the idea that it was a niche product. The leaders wanted to create something from it that everyone would be happy to buy and use daily. “People pay thousands of dollars for laser vision correction to avoid wearing glasses,” said one of the company's employees, hinting that even a chic fashion show dedicated to Google Glass will not change that. Google has withdrawn from the market the original version of Glass (although support is still being offered for corporate users - the only sector in which the device has had at least some success).
• Helpouts . Google launched Helpouts in 2013 so that people can share their experiences and teach each other various useful things in real-time video chat. A wide list of categories was organized in which experts offered educational sessions of everything in the world: from makeup lessons to learning to play the ukulele and therapy sessions. The site had a huge number of lessons that were difficult to attribute to any category. One consultant, who used the services of the service, shared with VentureBeat his opinion that, due to the many categories, it is extremely difficult to find a suitable expert teacher. “Udi Manber led the Helpouts project and was asked to solve the problems of all people,” says one former employee. "And this in some way doomed the project to ruin." When you try to cover a lot of things at once, there is little hope of bringing to mind a product that would become successful in some particular area. The company closed the project in February of this year.
• Express One former employee of the company expressed concern that Google Express (fast delivery service) is facing the same fate, because the company is trying to serve too many trading partners at once. That is, Google is trying to catch a lot of birds with one stone, instead of studying the market, working at first with fewer categories, as Amazon did with groceries through AmazonFresh or DoorDash - with food. “Google wants you to order parties and TV snacks at the same time. It’s not easy to make it happen. ”
• Google could beat Pinterest . According to the same employee, Pinterest-like product was nipped in the bud because Paige didn’t find it quite ambitious. He also noted that "Larry kills those things that seem to him not large enough." Now Google missed the opportunity to create a service for visual search of products.
• The Google Plus social network began in the same way . Chris Messina, a former Google designer who worked on the well-known social network that now breathes its last, wrote late last year in the Medium blog that Plus was originally conceived as a completely unique service. It was based on the idea of ​​creating not just another social network, but a suggestion of a way to make the search more personal and valuable. But the company set out to acquire its own Facebook. Messina claims that by making a compromise, Google made a mistake. In his opinion, it was necessary to be guided by the idea of ​​"x10". On the other hand, if Google began to work with a clearer and clearer approach to the project, then perhaps Facebook would really have a serious competitor taking profit. Alas, it all ended with a complete mix of functions: was it planned to create a service for storing images, or a single entrance to Google services? Now the company again divided them into parts.

But so far, competitors are far behind, if we talk about the main business of Google - search and advertising still accounts for more than 90% of the company's profits. And transcendental projects require more long years of development in order to bring Google any remuneration, calculated in currency notes. A bit of incrementalism would go well for the corporation.

“Often, the best progress is achieved by precisely those things that do not initially look grand,” says another employee. - "Therefore, Google has a hard time." After all, there is always the risk of skipping the next big boom, constantly paying attention to some monstrous ideas.

Unfortunately, Google did not respond to a request to comment on this material.