Google is often synonymous with innovation in people’s minds. Over the last 20+ years, they have created some of the most user-friendly, dominating products on the market. As of December 2024, its parent company Alphabet holds the title as the 5th largest company measured by market capitalization on the planet.
But, did you know that many of Google’s most successful products that drove its meteoric rise came from an internal incubator program that empowered staff to work on ideas outside of their primary job responsibilities? Meet Google’s 20% Time Program, an innovation ahead of it’s time that has resulted in hundreds in billions in revenue for Google.
Today, we’ll discuss the inception of Google’s 20% Time Program, the challenges it encountered as Google scaled, and how the program still functions to this day.
The Inception of Google’s 20% Time Program and The Crazy Successes that Came from It
Google co-founders Larry Page and Sergey Brin introduced the 20% time rule in Google’s early days. The idea was to give employees 20% of their workweek (essentially one day per week) to focus on projects they were passionate about, outside of their primary responsibilities. The rule was based on the belief that motivated employees working on projects they care about would produce innovative ideas that could benefit the company.
The 20% time rule led to some of Google’s most iconic products:
- Gmail: Developed by Paul Buchheit during his 20% time, Gmail revolutionized email with its generous storage and powerful search features. This product still holds 30.7% of the overall marketshare for email clients today.
- Google AdSense: A side project that turned into one of Google’s largest revenue streams, projected at $17 Billion in revenue in 2023 enabling content creators to earn from online ads.
- Google News: Developed by Google engineer Krishna Bharat following the 9/11 attacks after he noticed the need for a platform that could aggregate news from multiple sources for a comprehensive perspective. Today, Google News aggregates news from over 50,000 sources worldwide, is available in over 35 languages and serves audiences in more than 120 countries.
With all of these successes coming from the 20% Time Program, you would think that it would be an unstoppable force that would never be questioned over time as Google scaled… right?
Challenges 20% Time Encountered As Google Scaled and Went Public
Although Google’s 20% Time Program produced massive ROI for the organization, it was never a formalized policy that was included in employee handbooks or actual company documentation.
As the company scaled and went public, quarterly earnings and a short-term focus started to conflict with the cultural mindset and norms of allowing employees 20% of their time to work on side projects.
Initially, this resulted in employees coining the program as “120% Time” since they had to fulfill all of their regular work responsibilities and work on their side projects outside of normal working hours. Ultimately, this resulted in the program naturally becoming less utilized and championed over time.
The Current State of Google’s 20% Time Program Today
In recent years, Google has utilized more traditional methods for engaging and enabling employee ideas that were spun off of the concept of The 20% Time Program, including:
- Area 120 & Google Labs – This was Google’s in-house incubator where employees could work on experimental products full-time. It operated as a more formalized version of the original 20% time concept, though it was more selective.
- Innovation Weeks – Some Google teams implemented designated periods where employees could focus entirely on creative projects and new ideas.
- Hackathons and Fixits – Regular events where employees could dedicate time to passion projects or fixing existing issues.
Although these initiatives are great (it’s what we power at Ideawake after all 😊), it seems like Google took several steps backwards. Hindsight is 2020, but we believe that the cultural shift that stifled the utilization of programs like 20% Time was one of the big drivers that caused Google to be caught flat-footed when OpenAI released ChatGPT to the world, which many argue is the biggest threat to Google’s global search dominance in its 25+ years of existence.
3 Things You Can Learn from the Journey of Google’s 20% Time Program
The success of Google’s 20% Time Program is an inspirational story that also serves as a cautionary tale. Here are a few things you can take away from today as you start to build or continue to foster a culture of innovation at your organization –
- Formalized Policies for Innovation Are a Must – There are always going to be competing priorities that result from growth, internal politics, and personnel changes. In order to cement a successful program like Google’s 20% Time Program in place, it must be formalized in both policies and how frontline team members (as well as their managers) are measured in annual performance reviews.
- No Program is Safe without Continuous ROI Justification – Any internal program, regardless of past success needs to have it’s importance justified to leadership in terms of dollars and cents early, often, on on repeat.
- You Can Often Become a Victim of Your Own Success – Google’s unimaginable success (in some cases driven by the very projects that came from The 20% Time Program), caused it to be focused maximizing short-term growth and profit at the expense of the transformational innovations that gave it its throne in the first place.
