Spotted in The Product Management View

For example, consider Froogle, a fantastic opportunity for Google, given how so many people clearly start their e-commerce shopping process with a Google search. I can only believe that Google is intentionally holding back on this product for strategic or contractual reasons because I can't otherwise explain the lack of progress. Similarly with Gmail, another great opportunity to leverage the community's affinity for Google, that now is two years old and hasn't progressed much since its debut. Another terrific opportunity is the Google Desktop, but even very basic capabilities (like moving a file to a different folder) remain unsupported. And Orkut, the social networking site that launched at the right time and should have leaped when Friendster stumbled, also seems deserted by its product team. And Google Base. Why did they bother? And the list goes on.

Google has said over and over again that they are an engineering led company, and point to the fabled 20% time policy as a source of pride. The downside? It tends to lead to engineers driving off after bright shiny objects without regard to their actual value. In Google's case, it's led to a bunch of products that are 80% complete, and stay in perma-beta. Why? Likely because the relevant engineers lost interest once all the hard (read: interesting) problems were solved, and no one else there has the power to herd them toward actual delivery.