Naw, you're pretty much spot on. It took a few refinements to get traction, and that all happened about two years after it launched.
The 3rd gen iPod came out in early 2003, and was the first one with USB support and the familiar dock connector that we all take for granted today. At the same time the iTunes Music Store launched as well.
Then in fall 2003 Apple released iTunes for Windows. That and USB support means millions of potential customers who couldn't have used an iPod otherwise before. Then, checkmate: they brought out the iPod Mini in 2004. Not only did it look cool, it was priced at a point where all sorts other folks could get in, and they could finally use it on their Windows PCs.
The internet came on the market in 1982, 7 years later it was still pretty much only in universities.
If you count 1992 - when com connection was really allowed and the web was invented it probably still wasn't in all that many homes 7 years later. 1999 was still dial-up for me and I was a Caltech grad student!
Color television would be my pick for that category. If you go by time of first commercial introduction, it had no uptake really: it came out in 1953, but expensive units with little programming available sold poorly in the 1950s. But once it started catching on around 1965, the transition was really fast, with nearly everyone having one by 1970. If you went by 7-year period with the biggest percentage delta, I think it would be in the running.
No, the graph shows markets for entire product categories. Individual products might have faster initial growth (because previous iterations for that market would be ignored), on the other hand they are fast to be discontinued.
The iPod doesn't really count because it's a portable digital media player, not a product category on it's own. The first portable digital media players hit the market in 1997, but the first iPod reached the market in 2001.
That's just incredible. Milk made one application, gave it away for free, summarily shut it down, and sold for $15 - $30 million. I understand these guys are very talented, and that Google was buying the talent more than the product, but that's quite a price for some gifted people!
Every time I saw this happen in the 90s the result was the same: Small team shows up in big company after big $$, gets frustrated with big company BS, doesn't really care and runs down the game clock until vesting is nearly complete, leaves without fanfare.
I'm sure there must be counter examples, please let me know some if you have them.
Measure Map was a small team acquired by google that made a pretty analytics app for blogs and they went on to overhaul Google Analytics, which at the time still look pretty rough because it was an acquired app (Urchin) that was made for power users.
That team worked pretty well. After everyone vested, Jeff Veen put the band back together and they started cranking out other apps, first WikiRank and then Typekit, which was just bought by Adobe.
I can see the parallels with Milk: 1) a small interdisciplinary team that works well together and with a kickass designer (Daniel Burka) that has a knack for making the complex look simple, and 2) an app like Google+ that's just as important to their new core mission as Analytics was to their old one and also has similar room for improvement.
Two team-centric acquisitions that Google has made in recent years: Aardvark and Slide. Both were cases of products that were mostly ahead of their time or just-off re: product-market fit, and had genius teams. As far as I know, the majority of both teams are still at Google.
That was one of few acquisitions were Google actually wanted the product, and needed it badly. Mobile was Google's main growth area for years, until the social black hole opened last year or so.
That's a good point. In his current role he is essentially the top technical person in the company.
I wonder if the reason alot of acquired entrepreneurs leave is that they are used to having so much authority and latitude that getting a middle manager role at google just feels like wearing a straight jacket.
Yep...why go through the normal interview process to work at Google when you can get acqui-hired, get paid the same, but get a million-dollar "signing bonus"?
Milk was a rather quick flip, but if you consider a more average 4 year run to acquisition, and also consider the risk factor, isn't so much obviously better than just getting a job with Google salary and stock from the start.
So I heard this hundred times before and while it feels like Google (in this example) is making mistake, perhaps the second bottom here is that they wanted to shut down a competitor (at some field) and the nice way of doing it is to acquire. Then Google won't care if they find themselves behind gold cage of Google or not. They may leave or whatever. I don't think dropping $30MM is a big problem for Google either. For me or you that may be a waste, for Google it is 1) drop in the ocean 2) cheap way to shut them down.
I completely agree with this sentiment. Look where automobiles were 100 years ago - nothing like the vehicles we use today; vehicles that are designed to squeeze every last MPG out of a gallon of gas, or can keep us from dying in a major car accident.
Computing will improve. Computing will always improve. I think rants like this are helpful to point out where we definitely can improve, today, to bring on the future - such as making the iPhone dev and release process easier ;-)
You are kidding, right? Cars have hardly changed at all, still the same petrol powered devices with are a hard shell. Sure the car companies were forced to add in some extra safety mechanisms, but this does not mean much.
What? That's so wrong it's not even funny any more. If you look at the advances in efficiency (on all fronts - energy consumption, manufacturing, maintenance, ...), comfort, safety and basically all facets of personal transportation, it's nothing short of amazing. Today you can buy a new car for 4 months middle class wages and it'll be miles beyond anything you could buy just 25 years ago. (ok maybe not counting some things like leather seats, but apart from a few exceptions like that).
How often do cars break down now compared to 30, 50 or 80 years ago? I am pretty sure most of the early drivers were quite good mechanics, these days? Not so much. I'm sure Mr. Ford would find modern cars very foreign.
A chair, clothing and even houses haven't changed much over the years either. Most designs only change bits at a time, slowly morphing into unrecognisable things.
True, but a minor head overhaul would have been about 1/2 an hour with 'roadside tools' (say to replace a valve spring) possibly during your trip to grandma.
Today that same repair would be a couple of days in the shop, requiring tens of thousands of dollars of specialty tools. Of course those springs don't fail as often as they did back then (a combination of improved materials science and engineering) but when they do the fix is out of reach, even for a trained mechanic without access to a shop with all the required specialty tools.
I don't think anybody carries a valve spring compressor in their toolbox. Plus you'd run the risk of dropping the valve unless you was really careful and good luck getting the keepers back in on the side of the road without a way to hold the valve up. Even then who has the parts with them to make this a 1/2 hour job? Cars are just as hard/easy to fix now as back then. Fuel injection is arguably easier to troubleshoot then a carb given the computers help.
Actually I might be way off with the iPod...