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Google’s Doing It Again: Jaiku dying on the vine?

Google has an annoying habit of making acquisitions, and then letting those acquisitions die on the vine as (presumably) the talent behind them is employed elsewhere in the Googleplex. The seminal example is DodgeBall,,
who’s founder’s public departure from Google lead many to question Google’s ability to successfully integrate their purchases into their core proposition.

More recently, it looks like Google’s doing the same to Jaiku. “Jaiku users flee to Twitter,” “Jaiku woes plague Google,” and “What is Google’s plan for Jaiku?” are not the kind of headlines one wants to see three months after a purchase.

So what then is Google’s deal? Does anyone there really know how something like Jaiku or DodgeBall should be integrated into the Google-mission to index all information? It would seem not. Google has been roundly criticized for going off in too many directions, and it would seem that purchases like Jaiku are symptomatic of “executive pet projects” - i.e.: purchases made on a whim when a powerful exec mentions that they’d be good to have under their corporate umbrella, but without any real thought behind it.

While a cash-rich company like Google may enjoy the luxury of making poorly planned purchases, they’re not doing themselves, their customers (us), or entrepreneurs any favors. Internally, Google is building teams of disgruntled, neglected staff that have come in the door with acquisitions but found that their new working environment more or less doesn’t care about their aspirations. Further, once dynamic, growing products become static and neglected, to the detriment of that product’s customers (witness the Jaiku flight). Finally, the bright light of an entrepreneur is covered or otherwise extinguished as its subsumed by the Googleplex.

All told, it seems like a sad state of affairs that should be some senior Google’s priority to rectify.

dodgeball, google jaiku

One Response to “Google’s Doing It Again: Jaiku dying on the vine?”

Sulla context awareness a partire dal futuro di Jaiku | Microblogging.it | January 15th, 2008 at 6:29 am

[…] di numerosi blog, che hanno iniziato ad interrogarsi sui piani di Google per futuro di Jaiku, riesumato il caso Dodgeball e spinto gli utenti a passare a […]