What you don't understand is that Google doesn't like things that "move slow". If the product doesn't get enough attention or for whatever reason Google may pull the plug and you have no immediate replacement/open source version. Now that you mentioned that the industry moves slow I can actually see sunsetting blog post. Note this is from Google Plus but could apply to any product:

..." while our engineering teams have put a lot of effort and dedication into building Google+ over the years, it has not achieved broad consumer or adoption, and has seen limited user interaction ...""""