[Klathmon]

Which would be understandable if they ever shut down any cloud service offering of this level before (which they have not).

This whole "Google loves to shut stuff down" is really tired and overplayed.

Go ahead and compare Google's track record with Apple's or Microsoft's, or any other company. They are about on par, yet Google almost always gives 6+ months notice (often over a year), provides one-click alternatives, allows you to export your data in one of many formats, and more often than not has an in-house alternative that you can use automatically.

Take a look at the wiki page of google's products [1]. I'd be surprised if you even knew about 10% of those, let alone used more 1 or 2 significantly.

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_Google_products#Discon...

[rexignis]

On that list that I've used: Buzz, Pack, Desktop, Reader, iGoogle.

To Be Discontinued: Google Drive Hosting, Google Code.

I don't think it's tired and overplayed. It's a consequence of how Google works; try lots of things and don't be afraid to pull the plug. That strategy is great, and it works.

It's just sometimes the services that are on the edge of being worth Google's time to maintain cause the most backlash because a fair number of people used those services.

[plonh]

What to all those free consumer services that you don't pay for and and aren't connected to things you pay for have in common?

[acdha]

Google refused to allow you to pay for them? Each of those services could trivally have had some combination of ads and paid services but Google's management made strategic decisions to put resources elsewhere.

Only using paid services up front might seem to help but one look at the way Google Apps has been in maintenance mode for years suggests that even that offers only limited protection.

[wstrange]

Realistically, how many people would have paid for something like Google Reader after getting it for free for so many years? I think it would be a tough sell and you would have witnessed a lot of complaining...

On the other hand, the negative PR they have gotten from Reader (it's pretty much the poster child for the "Google cancels products" meme) - they probably should have kept it around, even if it was not strategic.

[acdha]

I'm pretty sure anyone working at Google knows how to put ads on a free service but in any case, I saw a lot of people calling for a paid option in the period between the de-featuring for the botched Google+ roll-out and actually closing the service down. That would have been a natural approach: free version has ads with some sort of “Pro” option to remove them.

[larrys]

"or any other company"

Any other company? You've named three. Truth is enterprise grade companies that serve the business market and don't give their products away for free or participate in a race to the bottom typically don't do this type of thing to the degree that google does. Perhaps the companies that do (including parts of msft) are those that deal with developers or consumers which apparently are more likely to not complain to much (other than to whine online) when they get the shaft. The stereotype, unfortunately, is true. At least that is what I have found.

Also, and this is important, there is the benign neglect phase where they simply keep the product minimally working but don't spend any time to improve it (like google voice).