[TrainedMonkey]

That is hearsay, but I heard that career growth and compensation at Google is heavily tied to hitting milestones. Largest possible milestone is launching things, so there is bottom up pressure to launch products... regardless if they succeed.

[joecot]

Right. The point of the oil exploration expedition is not whether you find oil or not. It's that at google, running an expedition gets you a promotion, whether you found anything useful or not.