How does a company like Google end up doing this? I'm assuming a decision like this has multiple stakeholders? Is there nobody in the room who is the voice of the customer?
I haven't worked at Google, but I have worked on other hardware that you might own if you're in the Hacker News demographic.
Usually what happens is someone wants to make some breaking changes somewhere, or otherwise stop supporting some old feature/API/use case. Or maybe nobody wants to deal with some old system that isn't a hot ticket on their promotion path.
Everyone is incentivized to work on new features, new products, and other forward-looking things, so it's not hard to get approval to just abandon something for which the cash flow has already occurred in favor of some future initiative.
Customer outrage is temporary. Some may swear off your products, but a surprising number will just shrug and buy something new, so the company wins.
Frustrating, but it's how things work at big companies who control large portions of the market.
"Customer outrage is temporary." -> Till it's not. If I could migrate my gmail (not even sure how many services I'd need to update) and use something else for Maps, I'd be off of all Google services.
Might that be the difference?
I would argue this product is different since you actually pay for the hardware and the software it runs on it. Different expectations than an ad supported service.
No. Google have an institutional contempt for humanity.
Just look at the support:
david.king Gold Product Expert Volunteer since 2011 (not a Google employee)
They can't even be bothered hiring people to support their offerings.