Re: Google groups outage

[JC Dill <jcdill.lists () gmail com>]

Hank Nussbacher wrote:
> Google Groups is the most poor managed project in Google.  No one 
> really cares much about it inside Google (my view as an external 
> user).  Go try to find some of the older Usenet postings they imported 
> years ago after they bought out Dejanews. You won't find much.   I've 
> reported bugs (search function, language search, etc.) over the past 3 
> years to them via their Groups forums and other means and basically 
> they all end up in dev/null.

This is true for many of Google's projects.  I believe it's an artifact 
of their "20%" policy.  People are given work assignments on projects 
that Google wants improvements on, and then in 20% of their time they 
can work on projects of their own choosing.  I believe that many (most?) 
of Google's abandoned projects were 20% projects, and their supporters 
did the first 90%[1] then got bored (lazy) and moved on to something 
new(er) and more exciting.  I'm pretty sure Orkut and Google Groups were 
both 20% projects that have since been essentially abandoned.

And don't get me started on Android.  The mapping and navigation 
software on Android sucks so many different ways that I'm surprised that 
Google allowed it out into the real world, nevermind providing it on 
shipping products.  It's been this broken for over a year, so obviously 
there isn't anyone inside Google who cares to fix the obvious problems.  
Whoever it was that developed these aps to this 90% state, has moved on 
to some new(er) and more exciting 20% project.

jc

[1]  http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ninety-ninety_rule