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By now, the news has spread across the internet about Google deciding to close down its Labs project in an effort to reorganize and refocus their energies. Looking back across the past nine years that Labs has been in operation, there has been some exciting things that have come out of the effort to experiment with different ideas. There have also been some misses as well, which is to be expected when riding on the edge of innovation like that.
Observing the announcements about Labs and the reshuffling of leadership in Google, as well as hearing some whispers from inside of the company itself, it makes me wonder if this is the signalling of the end of an era at Google. With the ever-changing landscape of technology, the rise of the Android mobile division, and the current legal fights that Google is embroiled in, it could be understandable that there may be a shift going on.
With Labs, Google communicated an air of open creativity, encouraging all of its employees to dream big and work to implement those ideas into something productive and usable. From the outside looking in, it seemed that Google was a huge gathering of some of the best minds of the day to create some awesome products. This, sadly, seems to be over.
Not that Google isn’t innovating: As we have seen with Google+, there is still commitment to putting out some great utilities. Rather, it looks like the company is shifting to a more corporate framework of development and implementation, planned, budgeted, and hierarchy approved. This is a stark contrast from the idea of what Labs was, which is a bit saddening. Certainly, handling innovation in a corporate mindset is more efficient on resources, both manpower and financial, but at the cost of stifling the creativity that we have come to expect out of Mountain View.
The good news is that a lot of the Labs projects are going to be rolled into other products, so users will still have access in different ways. Gmail and Maps will retain their Labs projects which is also excellent as well. But other projects such as Google Code Search will be closed down as of January of next year, ending a project that was very useful indeed.
Many critics will applaud this move since it has been said that Google has taken the approach of developing projects in the manner of throwing spaghetti on the wall and seeing what would stick, but don’t be fooled. This move is to save the bottom line of profit, and is a major change in the way that Google does business. The search giant has said that it is going to be keeping its 20% time policy active, which is great, but without Labs, how will they be able to express their ideas and work so that it can get to the crowdsourced improvement process that has been so successful in the past? It remains to be seen.
In honor of the closing of Google Labs, there is a slideshow of some the greatest hits that have come out of that exciting project. Check them out on the following pages.
