Google utilizes crowd testing for 14 software products to gain real-world insights, reduce costs, and enhance app capabilities. This approach minimizes the risk of software failure and shortens time-to-market, while also allowing for flexibility and scalability in testing efforts. Ultimately, crowd testing supports internal quality assurance by identifying critical bugs before products reach customers.

1. Why Google Uses Crowd Testing

2. Introduction: Why Crowd Testing
Google uses crowd testing to test 14 of its software products. The main
reason for this is the opportunity crowd sourced platforms give to test apps
in real world conditions. Cost-effectiveness and speed of execution are the
other two key benefits of crowd testing. The below video by Ex-Google
director, James Whittaker explains Google’s testing strategy:

3. 1) Opportunity to Improve Capabilities
Crowd testing helps Google align their testing efforts with their
development plan. Using crowd sourced platforms, it is possible to get
testing insights in varied test environments faster.
This enables development teams to improve the capabilities of the app.
With real insights from real users, Google thus makes its app features
better with each build.
Why Google Uses Crowd Testing

4. 2) Reduces Risk of Software Failure
The way an app works in a lab is very different from the way it
works in the real world. Crowd Testing gives you a pretty accurate
picture of your app’s performance in the real world. Insights from
crowd testing helps Google to focus its attention on critical issues
that needs to be fixed. There by it eliminates the risk of software
applications, not working in real world conditions.

5. 3) Reduces Costs
There is no fixed head count costs or overhead expenses with
crowd testing. Google thus saves big time on investing in full time
QA resources when they opt for crowd testing. In an interview the
ex-director of Google, James Whittaker explained that crowd
testing enabled them to save around 10%-25% of their testing
budget while delivering great results. Crowd Testing lowers the
cost of finding and fixing critical bugs, before it reaches the
customers. You can save about 5x to 10x on testing using crowd
sourced platforms compared to in-house testing.

6. 4) Reduces Time-To-Market
Crowd testing improves the internal efficiency of development
teams by reducing the time to market. It works well with agile
teams and helps in delivery of testing insights faster than
traditional testing methods. Google thus enjoys the benefit of
better product quality at lower costs with shorter release cycles.

7. 5) Expertise in Usability Testing
Crowd testing works beautifully in case of user centric apps as you can
target your testing efforts to match your target demographics. Thus it works
well for Google apps where collaboration is needed between the developers
and users of the application.
You can learn more about how crowd testing works with the below webinar
recording by 99tests, CEO Praveen Singh:

8. 6) Test Coverage
Crowd testing gives you complete coverage across geographies and
configurations without any major investments. Further by testing on real
devices/ machines and browsers development team can get insights on real
world usage of the application which cannot be replicated in a lab-based
testing environment. With real world insights on app performance, Google
can thus benchmark the quality of their app to other apps in the world.

9. 7) Supports Internal QA
With crowd testing Google ensures quality in the work done by
their internal QA team. You can find all the critical bugs before
your product reaches your customers. Ideally, it is recommended
for companies with user centric apps to allocate 20%-30% of their
testing budget for crowd testing to get the optimum results.

10. 8) Flexibility
Crowd Testing can help you handle peak loads or on-demand QA
requirements effectively especially in cases where a release has to be made
in a short time. You can scale your QA efforts in half the time it takes for
normal in-house QA teams to ramp up.
Hence, Google enjoys the flexibility through crowd sourcing to scale its
testing efforts to deliver new product features faster.

11. About 99tests
99tests is an online crowd testing platform that helps enterprises meet
their App quality goals. Our crowd testing platform provides economical,
and effective crowd-sourced testing solutions that enable individuals and
businesses to pursue excellence in software technology.
Learn more about the App testing services provided by 99tests. Visit
www.99tests.com . For more information, contact: contact@99tests.com