It’s easy to argue that the primary reason Microsoft has become the world’s largest software maker is that the company has repeatedly shown the ability to ship products. Even though the products may not be perfect and they may not meet the original ship date, Microsoft has proven that it almost always knows when the products are good enough to release to the market.
Google is emerging as one of Microsoft’s key competitors in the software business - perhaps even its biggest competitor within a few years - but Google has not mastered the “good enough” principle. Google software engineers have arguably created only two highly-profitable hit products: the ubiquitous Google.com search engine and the Web-based email client Gmail.
However, Google’s “continuous beta” approach that it used to build those two products will not satisfy the customers of two new market segments that Google wants to win: smartphone software and enterprise software ( Why ? ).
Google’s approach to innovation works well for building widgets and tools for the Internet and Google will continue its dominance in those areas.
However, if Google wants to succeed in smartphones and business applications then it’s going to have to create dedicated teams/departments within Google that are much more process-oriented and focused on product quality from end-to-end. The never-ending beta is not going to cut it in the smartphone world or the enterprise IT world.
Courtesy : TechRepublic
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