Ch. 11 - Developing and Managing Products

Before Google released an official product most of them went through a Beta testing period in their Google Labs. 


Google Labs was created to demonstrate and test new Google projects. Google Labs allowed them to test how well the product would do, they would receive feedback and improve the glitches, before making its products official. Many of the Google product we know today were once just an experiment in Google labs.


For example:
Gmail

Google Sky Map

Google Goggles 

Unfortunately, Google decided to shut down Google Labs earlier this year and it officially shut down on October 17, 2011.