The Real Cost of Google's "Low Cost" Beta Launch Strategy

Poor Google — such a short walk from pedestal to whipping post. The PR cycle is now faster than the product development cycle.

Speaking of which, Valleywag has the FUNNIEST post lambasting how Google churns out products faster than candies on the I Love Lucy candy factory conveyor belt — which is now more than the tech community can swallow:

Google blog announces a product which will displace some other company; Google engineers realize this is actually (a) Google Base or (b) an old Yahoo/Microsoft product with a new AJAX interface. Lose heart; but add it to their del.icio.us pages anyway.

Maybe that’s why Google execs are running to hide behind Mama Search:

“Our position is that search is a very hard problem. We have still a lot of work to do,” said Douglas Merrill, who looks after internal engineering.

What does the future hold for Google? A “very hard problem” indeed.

You have to wonder whether all of this bad PR actually represents a significant real cost to “low cost” developing and beta launching.

Perhaps the hundreds of Web 2.0 start-ups who are pursuing the “launch it once we’ve got three lines of AJAX code” strategy should considering baking a little longer before tossing the app out of the oven.

Just be careful not to stick a fork in the bubble before it’s done.