I like this, and it feels "Google-y". Worried that a handful of us will use it, lean on it heavily, and then Google will do what Google does and pull the plug on it.
>This is a Beta release of Cloud Shell. This feature is not covered by any SLA or deprecation policy and may be subject to backward-incompatible changes.
To the best of my recollection, I don't believe we've ever shutdown a product. Was there one in particular that hit you? (Reader, Wave, etc are totally different divisions.)
But it is more common for a Google product to be completely abandoned, no new features, few bugfixes, etc., as opposed to being actually shut down.
So yeah, I think it's entirely their fault.
so while "google" might have funds, the "google code development team" may have a very tiny allocation.
Even if they had been trying.
But yes, like many Google products, it was basically released and abandoned. They weren't trying. (If they had been, maybe we never would have had a github...)
I do think as a public service, they could have left all the code (and wiki documentation) accessible read-only virtually perpetually. Surely they can afford that.
Instead, we get tarball download only, and only until late 2016, after which it's all gone forever, if it hasn't been migrated elsewhere by code owners or third parties.
There's a long, long list of Google products and services that have been discontinued, as somebody else already linked to in this thread: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_Google_products#Discon...
This whole "Google loves to shut stuff down" is really tired and overplayed.
Go ahead and compare Google's track record with Apple's or Microsoft's, or any other company. They are about on par, yet Google almost always gives 6+ months notice (often over a year), provides one-click alternatives, allows you to export your data in one of many formats, and more often than not has an in-house alternative that you can use automatically.
Take a look at the wiki page of google's products [1]. I'd be surprised if you even knew about 10% of those, let alone used more 1 or 2 significantly.
[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_Google_products#Discon...
To Be Discontinued: Google Drive Hosting, Google Code.
I don't think it's tired and overplayed. It's a consequence of how Google works; try lots of things and don't be afraid to pull the plug. That strategy is great, and it works.
It's just sometimes the services that are on the edge of being worth Google's time to maintain cause the most backlash because a fair number of people used those services.
Only using paid services up front might seem to help but one look at the way Google Apps has been in maintenance mode for years suggests that even that offers only limited protection.
On the other hand, the negative PR they have gotten from Reader (it's pretty much the poster child for the "Google cancels products" meme) - they probably should have kept it around, even if it was not strategic.
Any other company? You've named three. Truth is enterprise grade companies that serve the business market and don't give their products away for free or participate in a race to the bottom typically don't do this type of thing to the degree that google does. Perhaps the companies that do (including parts of msft) are those that deal with developers or consumers which apparently are more likely to not complain to much (other than to whine online) when they get the shaft. The stereotype, unfortunately, is true. At least that is what I have found.
Also, and this is important, there is the benign neglect phase where they simply keep the product minimally working but don't spend any time to improve it (like google voice).
It is nothing more than a knee-jerk way to dismiss a rather easily defended position (due to the large number of closures that have been documented, ones that are more extreme or would have been considered less likely than Google Reader) by stereotyping someone's argument down to not just a "strawman" (an argument that is easily defeated), but essentially a purposely broken and laughable version of their argument so as to purposely ill-inform other people (which I feel the need to separate from a "strawman", as the goal is not to defeat the argument but to belittle the opponent). It is frankly one of the more underhanded argumentation tactics that people seem to enjoy defending here.
The reality is that Reader is a non-issue for most people here, as it isn't something you likely built your business or infrastructure around (and to the ones who ended up indirectly relying on it, that is a stretch to blame them for), but when Google randomly shuts down, cuts down, or entirely reboots APIs and services--something they have done many times, at the extremely painful end with things like Checkout and Login, but also with things such as App Engine or Charts--the fact that people seem to seriously have just forgotten how recent these things have been is distressing, and is made all the worse by people who insist on perpetuating "you are just whining about Reader" lie :/.
Let's not pretend that there was only one "really used" service they pulled. At Google's scale, every service is "really used".
And for the record, I did use iGoogle. And there were plenty of people who used Wave, Reader, Code, and Labs.
I object to the idea that it is, "a Google" when we could make the same argument of many tech companies. I object specifically here because it's been shown to be a talking point in a whole deck of talking points written for an MPAA smear campaign on Google.
And it's not particularly fair. They should call it, "Pulling a startup" given how often we fail at them.
I can find https://www.techdirt.com/articles/20150724/15501631756/smoki... (and a bunch of other articles about the same emails) but that doesn't seem to have the deck you're referring to. Any chance you can dig out a link?