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Eating one's own dog food, also called dogfooding, is when a company uses the products that it makes.[1] Dogfooding can be a way for a company to demonstrate confidence in its own products, and hence a kind of testimonial advertising.[2] For example, Microsoft and Google emphasize the use of its own software products inside the company.
History
The idea may have originated from testimonial-type television advertisements for Alpo dog food[citation needed] in which the actor Lorne Greene claimed that he fed it to his own dogs. In 1988, Microsoft manager Paul Maritz sent Brian Valentine, test manager for Microsoft LAN Manager, an email titled "Eating our own Dogfood", challenging him to increase internal usage of the company's product. From there, the usage of the term spread through the company.[3]
In many development environments, to "eat one's own dog food" refers to a point at which a product under development is delivered, even in its rough state, to all project members for use. Particularly in software development, early versions of the product may contain many bugs, crash, lose data, or otherwise be unusable, and the people on the project team do not fully rely on it. As the product matures, members of the team may be reluctant to try it, as they are aware of problems with earlier versions.[citation needed]
References
- ^ Miguel Helft (December 12, 2009). "Google Appears Closer to Releasing Its Own Phone". New York Times. http://bits.blogs.nytimes.com/2009/12/12/google-appears-closer-to-releasing-its-own-phone/. Retrieved 2009-12-12. "On Saturday morning, Google confirmed that it was testing a new concept in mobile phones, writing in a blog post that it was 'dogfooding' the devices, an expression that comes from the idea that companies should eat their own dog food, or use their own products."
- ^ "Microsoft tests its own 'dog food'". http://news.zdnet.com/2100-3513_22-5047467.html. Retrieved 2009-11-14.
- ^ Inside Out: Microsoft—In Our Own Words (ISBN 0446527394)
External links
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