This is great…

In a sense, Google, in its ADD-driven style, is building up a sizable engineering liability here, one that it will eventually have to ‘fess up to.” — at Infecious Greed

Is it true? For the life of me I don’t know.

Network effect businesses depend on running as fast as you can to capture a large a network as fast as possible. This is amazinlgy risky balance between capturing share and avoiding “engineering liability.” Nobody knows the right balance but we do know the trends. The share v.s. low-risk dial has moved consistently toward share wins. Microsoft’s ship crap fix it later strategy got them thru the transition to GUI, and quite a few other company killing upheavals. Open Source’s ship early and often strategy has enabled it to capture installed base and hence set standards faster than more conservative tactics.

I suspect that the author of the quote above is just peeved that he’s locked into more and more Google offerings while being frustrated that they aren’t becoming the robust software he desires. If these products were open source he could join in common cause with his fellow travelers and fix them. But since his vendor is a monopolist his only option is to plead, shame, and otherwise use voice rather than doing to resolve the problems.