[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.