> Lively, Google’s entry into three-dimensional virtual worlds, was publicly unveiled last July. Four months later, when the company decided to close it, only 10,000 people had logged into the service over the previous seven days. That was well below the targets set by Google’s quarterly project review process, and far behind Second Life from Linden Lab, which had about half a million users in a similar period.

Hmm. I'd be happy with that. I wonder how much it costs to run the service? I don't need to kill Second Life to be successful.

excellent point! What is a success to a smaller operator would be a failure for a much larger one.

"With services that don’t generate much cash, the company looks less at money spent than at measures of usefulness and the opportunity cost of devoting employees to one project over another."

That seems reasonable. If there are multiple projects in play, not investing staff time into the most promising projects is indeed an opportunity cost.

Everything comes down to marketing given equal functionality, if google would use its own homepage to promote these projects they would 'fly' regardless. What they do is actually quite smart, they check to see if projects can 'hold their own', and only if they can they get added to the shortcuts.

I think the article is interesting but mostly stating the obvious: Projects that do not make money and aren't able to garner a top spot in their sector/niche get killed. What I would find much more interesting is an article how Google chooses the companies it buys.