"The result occurred precisely because we told these incredible engineering teams to run as fast as possible to solve new problems," Schmidt said. "But then that created this other problem."
Surveys showed that Google users could recall a half-dozen or so products, Schmidt said, but "they cannot remember 35."
The company does not plan to tell engineers to halt all new products, Google said, nor does it plan to kill little-used services.
Rather, the effort is more focused on future development. After launching the initiative this summer, Schmidt said, Google canceled several services in development -- which he would not describe -- and instructed their creators to instead make them features in other products.
"That is a big change in the way we run the company," Schmidt said, describing Google's previous attitude as, "Just get this stuff built and get it out -- don't worry about the integration."
Enderle, the analyst, said that attitude showed as search engines such as Ask.com and start-up Chacha.com introduced innovations that Google lacked.
chris.gaither@latimes.com
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Small slices
Key players' share of the online mapping market, based on number of website visits
Mapquest: 56.3%
Yahoo Maps: 20.5%
Google Maps: 7.5%
MSN Virtual Earth: 4.3%
Google Earth: 2%
Others: 9.4%
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Source: Hitwise
