[aplusbi]

I would bet that the majority of non-techies couldn't name a single discontinued Google product.

Outside of the tech world Google still has a stellar reputation. Most people don't seem to care/know/notice any of the privacy issues, support issues or product continuation issues.

So I think your statement has some merit for certain types of products - ones that are targeted at the tech crowd - but overall I don't think it's generally true.

[onion2k]

I would bet that the majority of non-techies couldn't name a single discontinued Google product.

There are 283 products listed on Killed By Google. If you're right then Google must have a massive problem communicating with non-techies. What's the point in launching anything new if they're so bad at getting users?

[jsnell]

Sure, that list has a bunch of items. Have you looked at what they are? Here's a random sample of five items from it:

1. YouTube for PS Vita - a YT app for hardware that's been discontinued. Nobody would know of this because the PS Vita was a tiny platform that Sony quickly abandoned; normal people did not own Vitas.

2. Postini - email security software that Google bought, stopped selling standalone, and integrated into GMail. Nobody would have heard of this because it was enterprise software, not consumer.

3. Gesture Search - a toy Android app for searching for contacts / apps with handwriting recognition rather than a virtual keyboard. Nobody would have heard of this because it's a tech demo solving a tiny problem that people just didn't have. But if people had wanted this kind of search, it would have been integrated to the OS.

4. Building Maker - software for making building models on Google Earth. Nobody would have heard of this since it was incredibly niche. How many people want to model buildings into Google Earth? 10k?

5. Google Schemer - some kind of location-based activity sharing. This does appear to be a legit consumer application, though not one I'd heard of.