They keep products in beta for years. They roll out a half dozen overlapping products and let them all wither away.
They create and kill projects on a whim. They work on the Fail, Fail Again, Fail Better principle.
Traditional corporate values don't count for much in Mountain View. This isn't a huge snafu for them, it's hiccups. As long as the main goal of getting these products out into the market eventually is met, everyone there is happy.
I'm guessing the average age on this board is about 20, 22? Your generation's need for instant gratification and inability to deal with any slight change in plans always amazes me.
This is a load of steaming codswallop. How so? Let me explain....
This isn't Gmail or Wave or even Google+ - you know, some free website or service that doesn't exist in meatspace (aka the real world) and is funded by ads placed on the sites - this is the launch of a physical commercial product that is being sold in exchange for money to customers who are choosing these products over an extremely crowded field of competitors with huge leads in their respective markets. As such, the expectations are vastly different and should be. Creating and killing Wave is NOT the same as working with LG/ASUS/Samsung to make Nexus 4/7/10s. You don't make thousands of handsets and tablets on a "beta" basis.
"Traditional corporate values don't count for much in Mountain View"?!? What is the first rule of ALL businesses? A: TURN A PROFIT!!! Period. End of discussion. They are a publicly-traded corporation with obligations to shareholders, not a hippie commune running a vegan diner. The sign doesn't say, "Open when we get here, closed when we leave"; it says, "We're a real business selling real products." It is not unreasonable to expect professionalism from an outfit ranked #73 on the Fortune 100 chart with $38 billion in revenues and $10 billion in profits. Sorry, but "traditional corporate values" are totally counting in Mountain View.
Which leads to the most insulting aspect of your post, the idea that it's only whiny entitled kids who are impatient who are upset that instant gratification takes too long who are complaining. Sorry, but as someone who has frequently pushed back at the emo crybaby diaper-filling that has flooded this board, this isn't remotely the same thing. As the situation melted down over the past couple of days, it's become clear that Google has made bad decision after bad decision, compounded failure upon failure, and has left a LOT of people justifiably upset over the mismanagement of the situation.
The irony is that if they'd simply used their own search engine, they could've seen that it's lack of planning and communication that makes things go from bad to worse. It's not as if they're the first company to attempt to sell stuff on the Internet, but considering the endless snafus we've witnessed, you'd think they'd found someone who lived their life isolated from civilization and technology in the Amazonian jungle, dragged them to the city, sat them down in front of first computer they've ever seen in their life and told them to sell some phones and tablets. (But worse than that would've worked out.)
With the examples of Amazon and Apple and countless other successful e-tailers to learn from and the experience of launching the Nexus 7 several months ago, their is literally no excuse to not have hardened their systems to not be overwhelmed or, better yet, simply done a pre-order process where the past two weeks were spent taking orders up to the initial shipment quantity and then saying,
"We have reached our limit for pre-orders and all future orders will be fulfilled as soon as possible, probably within [X amount of time]." Who would've been angry if they'd done that? Not many and those who were would be those entitled brats you're speaking of.
The public has the capacity to be very understanding of inconveniences IF THEY ARE PROPERLY COMMUNICATED WITH. But we weren't communicated with at all. People who signed up to be notified, weren't. There was no announcement of what time sales would begin, leading to people staying up all night or running scripts to refresh the page and be alerted; massive inconveniences. When it was found out what time the sales were to start, the store jumped the gun and put them live early. Then the scrum that was like a virtual stampede on Black Friday as people hack and slash their way in to get at the year's hot toy for their brats who will be insufferable if Santa doesn't leave a Tickle Me Wii Patch doll/console under the tree. Then the taunting promises of
"Shipping estimate: November 15, 2012" which turned out to be
"SOL. See ya maybe in three weeks. kthxbai!"
You see, this has nothing to do with expecting too much, it's not receiving the BARE MINIMUM of service, information and responsiveness that EVERY OTHER FIRM DELIVERS. Imagine Apple or Amazon or Applebee's or American Eagle botching the sale and delivery of their respective products. You can't because THEY DON'T SCREW UP like Google just has. People aren't angry because they're over-entitled; they're angry because Google has failed to meet the legitimate expectations of what a competently-run multi-gazillion-dollar enterprise should deliver. If you hire the local slacker stoner to mow your lawn and he only does half of it, running through your wife's flower beds in the process, you can't get too angry because expectations are low.
However, this isn't Jeff Spicoli botched the edge trimming; this is #73 on the Fortune list saying that they're making a bold move into providing high end consumer electronic products to the general public in mass quantities and utterly botching the process in every phase. If Google wants to be treated as a big boy in the biz, then they must be judged by the standards the big boys are judged by and take their licks if they don't stack up. To try and claim that they're not a traditional company and thus shouldn't be held to account is ludicrous.
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