[arcbyte]

As I remember, it would have been very odd for them to do that in 2008 or 2009 when it was so immensley popular. But that was 4 or 5 year into it's life, well beyond the typical lifetime of Googles products.

Them shutting it down in 2005 or 2006 would have been annoying or disappointing like the shutdown of Google Wave but understandable.

It's all about brand expectations. Google is synonymous with unreliability because they don't have another brand to shoulder that association. It used to be "Beta" but no longer.