Google and Entrepreneurship

I just got done with my last seminar class at SFSU. There was a Google employee in my class who enjoyed celebrity status because of his association with Google. Our professor was too intrigued I suppose and asked him to do a small presentation about Entrepreneurship. It was suppose to coincide with the lecture on the same chapter topic.

He gladly accepted and took charge. Here is what he had to say about certain Google offerings that are shelved or have lot of resources allocated to it.

Google Checkout is pretty much a done deal. As soon as it went bust and Google’s hope of becoming the next PayPal was shattered, they dumped it and now its completely neglected and no resources are directed towards its growth.

Orkut was the brain child of a Turkish engineer and at a point was very big in Asian countries especially India. The response in the U.S. was dismal and it wasn’t able to compete with heavy weights like Facebook and MySpace. Pretty much shelved, no resources allocated.

Doubleclick which Google bought has not yet married AdSense. In other words, two different project managers working under one supervisor and no real integration between the two technologies. AdSense focus is mainly text and Doubleclick is sticking with its banner advertising.

Google TV is going to be the next big thing after 3D TV phenomenon. It will be launched in coming months. It is currently going through a process called “Dogfooding” which means you should be able to eat your own dog food. In English it means Google employees are testing the new product rigorously and giving feedback.

Google health will digitize medical records for you and your Doctor to access when need be. It will be fairly secured since Google will be storing more identifying information about its users. That is the reason they are having such a hard time making alliances and creating partnerships with different health care providers.

Rest of the presentation was about how Google lets its employees to work on projects they think can be beneficial for the company and provide users with better value. Entrepreneurship is the very reason Google has been so successful. Google is putting a lot more resources towards developing the next big thing in Mobile because that’s where everyone is headed.



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