BusinessWeek has a nice article on Google's new product creation philosophy of trying a bunch of products, refining them, and seeing what survives.
This article is from an interview with Marissa Mayer, the VP of search products and user experience.
There are discussions on how Google has done delving into the non search world, measuring new product success, the press, and Google's uncluttered home page.
1. I believe anyone who tests the waters over at 'google labs' on a regular basis has seen some benefit to their technological darwinism approach to product testing. I worry sometimes that the tools that I have chosen fall out of favor and no longer be supported by the search company but I use these tools under their ever present 'beta' banner. I've started using Google notebook... I know that this will likely NEVER see widespread usage but will they keep it 'alive'? Who knows. Oh, one more thing, you CAN have a ultra cluttered homepage just like yahoo and their ilk by 'personalizing your homepage'. I've done it is just as bad if not worse than yahoo. BUT, it was my choice and I can ALWAYS go back to their clean homepage if I choose and I like that.
Posted at 4:31PM on Jul 4th 2006 by Brent