Depends on the people. In the Stadia case there were people hired to build first party games in Montreal and some of the skills needed for that don’t have a natural place to go elsewhere inside of Google. I don’t know this for sure, but I expect many of those people were given a package and had to find new employers. People with transferable skills were moved onto other teams at Google depending on who needed those skills - effectively they were broken up for parts. And of course the enterprise service is still there and some of the people are still needed to keep it going.

My impression is that Google has actually changed how new initiatives are funded from the exec layer, such that there’s less likelihood of completely overlapping products being created, such as a new messaging service. I could be wrong about that, and even if I’m right it might change again in the future, but at least for now I’d be surprised to see a new messaging service get launched.

I think youtube music is also due for a rewrite. I mean, it's almost finished!

Or transferred to the strategy department to decide what the next in thing is so they can build multiple versions of it, seeing as they are now bored of messaging.

Usually everybody gets a chance to transfer. With a hiring freeze that'll be a lot harder.

Now now. Google has cleaned up their acts and no longer has multiple messaging apps.

Can I interest you in a sixth, incompatible rewrite of Google Wallet instead that will only launch in India while you make Google Pay 7.0 ?