When did it become wrong to test a product, and shut it down if it fails?
Why is it evil when Google does that, but okay when a startup does the exact same thing?
The difference between Google and the serious startups is that they have a record of launching products with no plan or intention to make money from them: they are loss leaders to bring more people into the Google walled garden. A lot of people didn't realise that in the past. People used these product knowing they weren't a money earner for Google, but people assumed Google was tying to be a good citizen and provide useful services for people. Using up the piles of money sloshing around at Google. People treat(ed) things like reader or gmail as basic infrastructure. Google enjoyed being treated like the benevolent dictator of the internet. We paid our 'taxes' in the form of ads and in return got lots of services and infrastructure for free. I heard countless people making the argument that Google's interests were intrinsically aligned with those of internet users: there was no way that giving more money and power to Google could ever go wrong.
It was totally wrong for people to think that way: corporations do not operate in the public interest. I think it's easy to understand the emotional backlash: people don't like to be made fools of. What they thought was benevolence turned out to be a PR exercise, or worse, a landgrab.
I can't rule that possibilty out, but I have also never seen evidence that suggested they created Reader with that intent.
Can't it be that Google tried to push adoption of a technology, believing that it would benefit them in the future?
Or that they believed that they would come up with a business model, given enough users.
You are right to be critical about startups without viable business - so am I - but don't forget: Google was that kind of startup for a few years
What you are basically saying is that if someone fails, we should avoid them in the future.
That's not very encouraging for anyone trying to build a business (or anything else).
I'm sorry, but this is an awful excuse. We're the type of people who master new technologies quickly. There's essentially $0 cost, and a ton of benefit, to new products becoming available. That's why they're exciting.
If the same startup starts another useful product, I'll check it out. I think people with your attitude are saying they'll cut off their nose to spite their face... but they actually won't. They'll use useful products, no matter the track record of the company, if the tradeoffs are close to right.
Start-ups should try different things and stop doing the stuff that doesn't work. So should Google. And Jobs saved Apple by killing off most of the products and projects when he returned from Next.
In the case of Google Reader, we saw a product lifespan from 2005 to 2013. That's eight years.
What lifespan can a user reasonably expect from any software product, and at what point is a company killing products so fast, that it's unlikely most customer will extract any value out of it. (considering the time needed to learn using the product and so on)