[whack]

Genuine question: Has Google ever achieved financial success with a moonshot project?

Google Glass seems to have come closest to becoming an actual product, but it eventually crashed and burned as well.

The self-driving car was a great technological success, but I really wonder how Google plans to monetize it. Years ago, when Google was the only major company doing self-driving-cars, there was a lot of buzz and potential. But they didn't seem to capitalize on that in any way. Now that Tesla and every other major car company has achieved near-parity, I really wonder what Google's end-game is for self-driving cars.

In general, a lot of these moonshot projects sound so zany, that I wonder if the division will ever recoup its investment.

[corobo]

I believe Android was (technically at least) a moonshot

Page writes: “Having exceeded even the crazy ambitious goals we dreamed of for Android—and with a really strong leadership team in place—Andy’s decided it’s time to hand over the reins and start a new chapter at Google. Andy, more moonshots please!” [1]

The "more moonshots" implies that Android was itself a moonshot. Whether it was declared one at the time Android Inc was purchased I don't know!

As for financial success, in a recent lawsuit with Oracle it was disclosed Android had a profit of $22 billion [2] if I'm reading into it right (admittedly very quick research, not at all reliable!)

[1] https://techcrunch.com/2013/03/13/andy-rubins-next-moonshot-...

[2] http://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2016-01-21/google-s-a...

[amelius]

I think the term "moonshot" is reserved for exploring new technical frontiers. Android is "just" another OS.

[eli]

Easy to say that now. They started developing it before the iPhone came out, right?

[NzNz]

This is what it looked like before the iPhone: http://www.technobuffalo.com/wp-content/uploads/2011/10/Scre... So, yes, it was "just another OS" in the grand scheme of things. A blackberry and symbian competitor. A footnote. An explorer of new frontiers it was not.

http://appleinsider.com/articles/14/04/14/exclusive-android-...

" The change log of the planning document conveys the rapid change that occured in April, when suddenly there was a "major update." Among the changes were section 3.11.2 Touchscreen, which now read, "a touch screen for finger-based navigation—including multitouch capabilities—is required. Stylus-based navigation is not supported."

The iPhone had the android team sweat bullets. They were working all this time on a Blackberry clone, and had to re-purpose their UI to become 100% multitouch friendly before releasing it.

Android might have been released earlier than it did if the iPhone hadn't been a thing. It had to be remade to not become a laughing stock. It still was a laughing stock at release though.

" When it was released, Android still lacked support for touchscreen typing by finger. And while the phone shipped with hardware support for multitouch, its software was patched to remove support for the feature. In late 2009, Google released Android 2.0, adding software support for multitouch. "

[burkaman]

Yeah, but Andy Rubin and Android were a separate company that Google bought. They sort of acquired someone else's moonshot.

[amelius]

Also, there was Symbian OS, and probably a bunch of others. So not even someone else's moonshot.

Imho, Android was more about exploring a new business strategy for Google.

[eli]

OK, but c'mon. If the definition of "moonshot" means you built something without benefit significant previous work in the field, then sending a spaceship to the moon doesn't qualify either.

[stevetursi]

From a different nytimes Article this week:

'Arguably the biggest success, Google Brain, is the one people know the least about. It was an artificial intelligence effort that was spun back into core Google in 2012 and is now embedded in products like voice search and the Google Photos app, in which users can search their albums for images like “dogs” or “mountains.”'

http://www.nytimes.com/2016/07/24/technology/they-promised-u...

[Retric]

In terms of internal projects gmail, and local maps comes to mind. If your going to call everything that did not work a moonshot then by definition no. However, it's only a failure when they give up so self driving cars are rather undecided at this point, and theses projects help recruiting which has non obvious benefit.

[whack]

By moonshots, I'm referring specifically to projects that came out of the "Other Bets" division. That division specifically invests in projects that are "out there." From what I hear, realistic products like gmail and maps came out of the 20% time and other product-divisions, not the "Other Bets" division.

[kgwgk]

Considering that the Other Bets division (and Alphabet itself) was created one year ago, maybe it's too early to evaluate what has it produced.

[eli_gottlieb]

The important question is whether something was designated a "moonshot" before it succeeded or failed, thus giving us an unbiased sample.

[zaroth]

I think moonshot, by definition, means 15+ year timeframe to full realization. Google is a very young company, they just haven't had piles of cash to invest in moonshots for long enough for us to have seen the results. X was founded just 6 years ago, Alphabet was founded just last year!

To be asking 6 years in where are all the moonshot successes already? I think this demonstrates exactly how problematic and pervasive short-term thinking is.

The question to ask is in 50 years, how many different $10B+ revenue streams will Alphabet have?

If we really think this R&D isn't going to pay off, at the scale Alphabet operates, that's almost like losing faith in humanity.

[eli_gottlieb]

I didn't say moonshots were a bad thing. I just stated the basic standard for collecting a sample of something in a halfway unbiased way.

[flylib]

would be careful to say "near-parity", google is still ahead of everyone in level 4 autonomous cars at the moment, not only that the gap may be larger then the other car companies lead you to believe.

[virgilp]

This.

I mean, Apple is investing into cars, changing the original goal from "car" to "self-driving car"... and we are seriously questioning whether google's effort was a good idea? WTF, people?

[diydsp]

I don't know about your personal definition of success...

but R&D like this is excellent PR. It helps the buzz keep going, attracts smart people, keeps the stock up.

It also intimidates other companies and can be used strategically to mislead them and keep them on their toes.

[amelius]

> Genuine question: Has Google ever achieved financial success with a moonshot project?

Just shows once again how risky it is to run a startup in SV, putting your eggs in one basket. Lots of otherwise very intelligent people think they can be smarter than Google.