As much as everyone rags on Google for their shot gun approach to product development, Google is actually showing signs of growing up and building a much needed product development/maketing process & infrastructure. Business Week spend some time pointing out google’s questionable track record. John Battelle has also pointed out multiple times in the past that Google needs to do a better job of integrating product development, management, and marketing - or so he calls it “product marketing.”

Google circa 2000 approach - build it they will come . . . cause we are google and you love us not being evil . . . we in fact hate marketing
(I heard they let go an interim VP of Marketing back in the day for recommending a TV compaign)

Google circa 2003 approach - leverage the huge amount of search traffic to send traffic to new products . . . but I still wont pick up a phone call or answer an email to market the damn thing cause you come to me. . . I’m google

Google Checkout 2006 approach -

1) code complete doesnt mean time to launch, infact build some business momentum first before launching
2) get some named accounts to proof value propsition as well as write some marketing case studies before opening up the kimono
3) leverage google traffic, userbase, strategy etc
4) oh ya, make sure the damn thing scales first

In fact, it looked to me that Google Checkout was incredibly well coordinated from PR, branding, business development, release, strategy, and general marketing perspective. I think a few things has contributed to this. From what I know, the Google Checkout team is not just bunch of 20 some odd year olds, it is actually one of the older (read more experienced) team at Google with people who learned product management/marketing at a diverse set of companies before landing at google. Also, a friend told me that Google hired a consultant who used to be an executive at eBay to revamp it Product Development Life Cycle and model it similar to eBay’s clockwork like process. (Ironic isnt it? that as eBay tries to losen up its processes, Google is doing the opposite). If Google checkout becomes successful, it will be held up at Google as a best practice example of how to manage the PDLC. All the more headaches for the rest of the valley. . . smart, innovative, risk seeking, AND process driven . . . now they just have to work on that ego thing . . .