A recent blog post in the Silicon Valley Watcher asserted that Google dislikes marketing and PR and that this is the reason for several new service offering failures. According to author Tom Foremski, the company has no problem investing in research and technology, but when it comes time to launch a new service there is a gaping hole in its marketing strategy. 

The post cited several failures, including Google Lively, Google Print Ads, Google Answers, Google Catalog Search and Dodgeball, as offerings that started with a bang but were shut down after low adoption or an inability to compete. 

It seems that with Google's scale and reach, touching hundreds of millions of users, it would be able to encourage adoption of new tools and products easily. According to Foremski, the problem lies in the company's belief that good products will be sought out by consumers on their own merits with no need for marketing support. However, even with the world at your door, the best mousetrap in the world won't get them to enter unless they know it's there. 

The assumption that superior technology will trump clever marketing has led to many wasted Google initiatives (and millions of dollars). Google can't rely on the fact that its initial offering of a better search facility succeeded without marketing support. Times have changed. 

Better engineering supported by effective marketing will win markets and build value. We agree with Mr. Foremski that, unless Google and many of the other technology companies out there that believe in the better mousetrap theory change their culture and apply marketing strategies to support their product launches, they are dooming themselves to under whelming results.