[paxys]

From the company’s perspective it’s a straightforward calculation.

Considering that this will only apply to failing products, the price they can expect to get for it is negligible, more so considering the buyer is going to be a handful of regular employees rather than a big company. So selling vs killing makes no material difference to their bottom line.

On the other side, there’s a mountain of due diligence they have to do to make sure that the decision is sensible. Is the product tied to the company’s brand at all? Will it reflect badly on them if the new owners decide to take it in some different direction? Or can it be used to compete with the company in the future? Does it have user data? Are they in accordance with the TOS and a thousand data laws when selling it to someone else?

So from the business side the sensible answer is usually to just kill the product.

[cs02rm0]

Will it reflect badly on them if the new owners decide to take it in some different direction?

I think there's still a flip side to these decisions. Google has an established reputation as a product killer, I'm sure the effect of that won't bring them down but it's there and I doubt handing a product off to someone else would either.

[wongarsu]

> Considering that this will only apply to failing products

Companies like Google often shut down products that would be called incredibly successful if they were a startup or small business. In $BigCorp, the yardstick is their main moneymaker, and if you are less profitable and don't fit in the larger strategy you can get cut simply to help the company keep focus on what's important.

[lancesells]

On the other side, there are so many companies that would never really make it without a lifeline that extends into the hundreds of millions. Even after IPO, there are so many companies losing heaps of money. So maybe Google just doesn't want to be losing $100M a year for 10 years.