The title implies all that. At least that's how I see it.

My main point: in my view, the logical reasoning process that leads to the decision of inventing Google Reader inside Google or outside Google should be independent of Google culture at the time. It is a function of how much control you have over the company and your situation and goals, but not the company culture, so the correct decision with respect to the goals should not have changed over time. Logically, he should have always assumed that his product may get axed at the king's will and should have accounted for this risk in his calculations. The fact that leadership/culture can change against your will is a risk that existed from the start.

(To be honest, I don't have anything personal against this guy. I liked his product. What I meant to say was much more general when I mentioned "having balls": I really meant you cannot retrospectively claim credit for something you did not actually go and do, and the tone of that article irritates me in this respect. It might very well be the article writer's fault, not the guy himself.)

Actually, mehrdata, I think you might be reading a lot more into my statements than are actually present. While cultures evolve, I feel lucky we were able to make Reader within Google. I think that its being at Google made it a better product.

When asked if I would build it in today's Google my answer was "no" given that Google is clearly uninterested in this project at the moment. Seems kinda obvious, really.

I feel that epistasis more accurately guessed at the unpublished feelings I've had. The following are all things I think simultaneously right now...

Google is a great company

Google makes great things

Google is not interested in pursuing Reader

Communication around Reader's value (or how to improve it) within Google was unclear

There may be confusion for inventor-types within Google on how to proceed in today's Google, though that's possibly remedied by better communication internally

I'm glad you liked Reader. No need to guess about my actual thoughts about the past since I can summarize: Thanks to a great company with great people, Google Reader was made into a service that was many times better than I ever could have built alone in my apartment. There's no way to know if that success could have been achieved somewhere else. Everyone working on Reader knew it could have been cancelled at any time. It wasn't cancelled for a long time. I'm glad we got to experiment with the idea and the experience.

Thanks for your reply. I'm glad you cleared this up. I'm sorry if I read too much through your statements.

The last feeling you mentioned is totally aligned with I was trying to say: to emphasize if you are an inventor type, you'd want to evaluate the risk of serving at the pleasure of the king carefully; it isn't necessarily a bad value proposition, but it certainly carries the risk of getting derailed or axed. Same goes for people who sell their companies to others; you cannot expect them to move forward with your initial vision.

Wait. When asked if you would build it in Today's Google, your answer would be no, because Google is clearly uninterested in this project at the moment. :). I mean really, if Google is uninterested, it's Google who effectively said No isn't it?

Er, no. At the risk of getting all Primer on this, the hypothetical situation posed allowed for a history where Reader was never invented but somehow magically I retained the knowledge of how Google would have evolved in the (hypothetical-to-them) event Reader had been launched there.

Given that knowledge, I certainly wouldn't choose to build it in today's Google given I'd be armed with data suggesting it would not be supported. This point, while kind of mindless and diverting, doesn't seem very useful, though.

Actually, there's a bunch of causality minefields here; we should both be concerned that we could inadvertently violate Novikov's self-consistency principle. My conclusion is for us to back away slowly from the thread – I don't want either of us to accidentally become our own grandfathers.