If Jeff Bezos sent an email to the company saying "We want retail revenue to increase by X% by 2023" would you assume that they'd shutter the whole thing if they didn't meet that goal? Of course not.
Why is a goal and strategy for Google treated differently?
Google migrated from a weird, Apple like "come buy stuff from us, but first solve this riddle" sales process with reps with huge territories to a more traditional enterprise model. Based on Linkedin updates, the Oracle class of 2015 has basically moved in on the sales side. Those guys usually make premium bank, so they need to bang out deals or GTFO.
And the comments upthread said that GCP would be terminated instantly if that target isn't met. You genuinely don't see the disconnect in that interpretation?
Things like Google Reader had healthy user bases when Google came for them in the night.
They could even sell most of the products they murder to someone else for millions.
It would have cost Google more money to sell Reader than anyone would have bought it for.
It's hard to even imagine how it could have been split apart from the mothership at all.
No. The technology died. Isn't this clear evidence that the product was dead in the water?
I wonder if anyone in Google management ever looks back and regrets that decision?
It's still always being brought up, even 6.5 years later.
I couldn't actually read the news in it anymore.
Most sites have RSS feeds, even the heavy hitters like YouTube.
These are not really comparable worlds.
If I also thought it was unlikely that they would hit their target I would be really worried (assuming of course I had any reason to actually worry about how Amazon's business was doing)
If we were talking about a company that had a history of shutting down successful divisions because they were not successful enough I would think "hey 2023 is when the shutting down process is likely to start"