[Zenst]

Google seems to launch a product, see if it dominates and then monitorises it or drop it like a stone. But offering a free product, advert free, building up customer base for years and then flipping the switch - has become the norm. What they seem to be gearing towards more and more, is offering customers subscription deals to opt out of adverts etc.

Pretty genius really from a company/marketing perspective and equally an approach that only a company the scale of Google with the pockets, could pull off. They effectively rope in lots of developers, then flip the switch on them, knowing some will jump, but equally most will hang in there for various reasons. They are now looking at tapping into the other end of the pie with customer subscriptions.

The upshot and what you end up paying for is the ability to get real support - least that is the vertues many a Google 1, user are trumpeting.

But the real upshot is moves like this will only fuel development of alternative offerings and more so, boost existing alternative offerings.

As with most things beyond death and taxes, there is some sort of choice. It is surprising how many companies in various forms count on consumers not exercising those choices.

[gcb0]

lots of wild assumptions there, and slightly offtopic to the thread you replied to, which was about cloud offerings specifically , where they are already on the traditional google product path, not in this assumed path they might or not use for maps.