>However, I wonder whether such slight, but no doubt data-driven, infelicities, such as the launch of Google Buzz, the riotously misguided home page designs, or the launch of Nexus One, might have done with one or two fewer data-driven managers and one or two more people who offered suggestions about what real people like and how they might react?<p>It's very easy to look at a company like Google and find examples of significant failures.<p>Though actually, I think the 'failures' he brings up are not quite the failures he thinks they are. They're not actually data-driven decisions. They're data-collecting experiments. Google is in no way wedded to any given device or approach. It's pivot, pivot, pivot, often in eight directions at once. Releasing a polished product with top-notch marketing is a good way to make a lot of money in the short term, but your customers get very attached to what you've given them, and it makes it a lot harder to innovate in the long term.