Honestly, at this point Google products should come with some kind of versioning and labelling for commitments.

It would be far easier to choose Google services (and less irritating as a consumer) if services were labelled alpha, beta, production, and LTS, and if each of those labels had a specific duration (e.g. alpha services can vanish immediately without warning; beta have a limited lifecycle where they need to become profitable or at least self-sustaining, production are generally stable and can be relied on for a year, and LTS will be supported for a specific period of time, backed by enterprise support agreements).

But that's just crazy talk!

I do, for two reasons. One, Google's culture and managerial system is pretty poor, in such a way that it rewards starting things and not finishing them. That hurts consumers. Two, it feels contrary to the design of public corporations. Should Google be allowed by its owners to spend money trying out hundreds of new ideas? Or should it give profits back to shareholders who can then go do these things themselves while Google just tries to be come a really efficient, and insanely profitable search provider?

I'd advocate for the latter as a healthier way to run society with fewer tech giants of lovecraftian size slipping their tentacles into every cranny that one can stuff a million dollars into.

Maybe Google should label those experimental products more clearly, so users are aware and align expectations.

Depends on where you stand... If you're one of the people who comes to rely on the product, then your answer would probably be "yes".

The cost of the experimentation is people wondering what product they'll discontinue next and whether it'll be one that _they_ rely on. If you find yourself asking this often enough, you'll probably start moving out of the Google ecosystem. How is this good for Google?

Yes, I understand that products need to pay for themselves, but Google keeps drawing people into services that they then shut down. It's frustrating for users and damaging to Google. What's the cost of the damage to their reputation?

If they’re going to kill them at the same rate? Yes.

Depends what you mean by bad; it hurts trust. For instance the Appengine to Appengine 2 transition is a particularly painful one for a consumer who built an entire business on it and I was part of a migration to address this.

I had heard Google is unreliable in this aspect before but after this particular experience I will unlikely use or suggest Google for anything serious.

Experimenting is fine. shutting down good products and replacing them with inferior ones (and adding a chat messenger in every product) is not.