Laugh all you want, but Waze actually has less of the "social" side to it today than it had ten years ago. Maybe some Google PM even got promoted for removing some chat functionality for once.
then get cause it to get shutdown on the next cycle
Believe it or not, shutting down a product is something you can brag about in perf. My current manager went form L6 to L7 mainly because of that.
I totally believe it and it's the right way. Few jobs ago I advocated to shut down a business unit that wasn't profitable and as far as I could tell (this was controversial) had no path to profitability.
Shutting it down, we freed up about 200 million per year, which is the same or better as earnings that amount.