And they announced it on Flickr, which is ironic, kinda, since it looked like Dodgeball was going to be Google’s Flickr — a semi-trendoid, fairly simple community application with viral uptake…and more question marks than zeroes on the balance sheet.
What went wrong? No follow-through and no support from Google, which seems to be off chasing other shiny objects instead of tending to the products and talent in which it invested. This may be another data point that demonstrates that tactical is the new strategic.
Because I am craven, I whipped out a spreadsheet to figure out how much money the two founders might have walked away from. It’s impossible to know the dollar amount without knowing how much Google paid for it and whether they had investors, etc., but since they were less than 2 years into what was probably a 3-4 year earn-out it seems like the number must have been non-trivial, yet not psychotically large, again all depending on what the purchase price was and whether they had any investors. But my point, and I do have one, is: good for those guys for following their passions and not buying into the myth of the golden handcuffs.
I should mention that I am/was a enthusiastic user of Dodgeball and I still ping my contacts every so often (mainly to let me wife et al. know where I am). It would be a pity if Dodgeball underwent an unfortunate transmogrification now that two of the founders are out the door.
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