It's interesting to see the contrast between Google, Apple and Microsoft.
Google: Does tons of crazy things, launches a lot of them, many fail.
Apple: Does tons of crazy things, tells nobody, launches a select few that turn into huge hits.
Microsoft: Does tons of crazy things, tells some people, launches almost none of them, instead sells perpetually boring but massively profitable Office + Windows suite.
The few break-out hits that Microsoft has had, Bing and Xbox, are both renegade projects that succeeded only because the teams were exceptionally determined and fought tooth and nail to avoid being sucked into the "Microsoft" world.
Others, like Kin, were given weak support and pulled almost immediately after launch. The rest never see the light of day other than through papers and glimpses in tech demos.
Bing is not a "break-out hit". It loses $1 billion every year for Microsoft last I checked about a year ago. It's relatively little used and rarely do any of my client sites get search referrals from them (I own a web dev company).
Google: Does tons of crazy things, launches a lot of them, many fail.
Apple: Does tons of crazy things, tells nobody, launches a select few that turn into huge hits.
Microsoft: Does tons of crazy things, tells some people, launches almost none of them, instead sells perpetually boring but massively profitable Office + Windows suite.
The few break-out hits that Microsoft has had, Bing and Xbox, are both renegade projects that succeeded only because the teams were exceptionally determined and fought tooth and nail to avoid being sucked into the "Microsoft" world.
Others, like Kin, were given weak support and pulled almost immediately after launch. The rest never see the light of day other than through papers and glimpses in tech demos.