I was the Associate Product Manager assigned to Orkut as it prepared to launch. It was not 20% of his time ;-) Orkut was the backup name we had to go with because we couldn't reach a deal to get the name he wanted (eden.com) from a domain squatter.

Looks like somebody got it. Do you remember what the squatter's terms were then, or was it simply not for sale at any price?

Good to know! But did it originate as a 20% time project? Because this is not the first time I've heard this.

They paved Paradise and put up a parking lot.

Spot on about environment.

I recently built a calculator to try to quantify the gains an org could expect as they become more "AI-native." I tried to account for a bunch of things including env, which I call "AI roadway," but I'm definitely missing codebase readiness (thank you, author), and also bottleneck analysis. Even without those considerations, though, gains are usually modest. It's hard to get to 2x.

Tool is here if useful: https://timvasil.com/ai-native