There was a recent event involving Google running a silent test on some stable Chrome environments. This test ended up completely breaking several corporate deployments with no clear way of detecting the cause. The natural reaction from many is that Google is clearly in the wrong because you don’t put customers at risk. However, the question that comes to my mind is did Google realize exactly how “corporate” Chrome was now perceived?
New technology goes through phases where the customer tolerance for bugs and issues decreases over time. A beta release is expected to have bugs and issues – many possibly serious and difficult to resolve. Version 1 released to a limited audience is also still expected to have bugs and issues – less serious but still present. As the customer base grows and a track record is developed, stability becomes a silent expectation. After some period of time, a quiet consensus develops that any bug or issue is unacceptable.
To me, every Google product feels at least a little experimental. It’s in the DNA of the organization. They don’t do stable well – their strengths are features, capabilities, innovation, evolution, and being on the cutting edge. They also don’t do customer support well. That may be the biggest reason I don’t look at them as being Enterprise ready.
But apparently, the track record for Chrome had elevated to the point where many Enterprise IT managers considered it to the point of permanent stability. My guess is that their silent perception was not matched by the perception of Google itself. That disconnect led to this situation.
The lesson here is about all technology in general. This silent perception of customers is something you have to keep in mind with all of your systems. If they believe the state of the system is different than your own belief, noise over bugs and issues may be outsized versus your expectations. Just one more thing to think through in your technology strategies.