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Comment by sh1mmer | Hacker News Reader

I think Google are actually really brave to do this and I for one am proud of them. Lots of corporate companies keep around products in zombie states for years because they are afraid of shutting stuff down and upsetting customers.

Google provides lots of free services and I think it's awesome that they try stuff, innovate and then pull out when it's not working for them.

I think it's good they gave everyone a month's notice and provided a txt based alternative. It would have been nice if they'd also pointed to some voice alternatives provided by "competitors" though.

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The flip side of course is that it becomes dangerous if you rely on any of Google's free services. An extreme example, but what happens if GMail isn't profitable enough? Maybe Adsense for content isn't pulling it's weight any more (if it ever has)?

411 was a fairly useful service, and while shutting it down is probably the right business move, it pushes me more and more to move my primary email account and diversifying my advertising.

The rumor I always heard was that 411 was only around to stress-test their voice recognition backend. It really wasn't delivering ads or anything of revenue to them.

I've also heard rumors that Gmail and Adsense for Content aren't particularly profitable for Google. Of course I've also heard that the brand equity created with Gmail is very valuable and those two are extreme examples, but even based on similar rumors it's possible Google could shut down either one.

Adsense for Content is exceptionally profitable. Gmail pulls its weight.

I don't think Gmail would get shut down since it's a part of Google Apps, a paid service. Unless that turns out to be a burden on the company...

Rather than a rumor, it's just the way Google works. They are as data-driven as you can get. Think of all the AI work they're doing that one easily takes for granted: computer vision (image search, goggles, street view), nlp (translate, voice, search, etc), machine learning (search, et al), etc.

Right, and now they have millions of Android devices out in the wild with voice input collecting for them.

Most services have no switching cost, so it doesn't really matter. Gmail is pretty much the only Google service I can think of that would be a pain, and they'd keep Gmail even if it were losing money for a large host of reasons.

Oh, also Google Voice. When they bought that they changed my number on me and I basically stopped using it as a result.

my understanding is that "Adsense for content" is called " Google Network Web Sites" on their financial statements, and it's responsible for about 1/3 of their revenue.

http://investor.google.com/financial/tables.html

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