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That's what happens when you encourage your employees to build things on their own. You have more failures than successes as far as products go.

Personally, I like that Google has these pet projects that they try out for a while and see if they work. Not everything you do is going to be successful.

I'll take my gmail/maps/apps/reader and be happy. And who knows, maybe in the near future they will come out with something new that I can't live without.

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Exactly -- without having swung and missed so many times, they wouldn't have hit so many out of the park, too.

Gmail, Maps, Docs, and Reader all started out as these same sorts of embryonic projects that got critical mass and justified their development into the blockbuster services they are now. It seems ingrained in Google's corporate culture to push things out there and see what has staying power. Some things stick and some don't, that's life.

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