[nopelynopington]

Was pocket getting traction? It's been around since 2007 and Wikipedia says it had 17 million users in 2015. In an internet of billions of users that's not many.

Google have often killed innovative and popular products (reader, picasa, chromecast, stadia, panoramio) but I doubt anyone would believe that's it's evidence of some kind of infiltrator sabotaging the company.

[toss1]

I wouldn't measure traction merely by counts of occasional users — which measures only lowest common denominator.

Much more important is quantity and quality of use by those do make it a part of their personal or work lives — measuring 'stickiness'.

Having many users who can and will stop using your product for trivial reasons is far less good than having fewer users who will stick with your product, and find it a positive value, and will stick with your ecosystem and encourage others to do so.

And yes, with Google, I actively avoid using their products specifically because no matter how useful they make those products, Google has a well-established habit of killing them for no apparent reason or timing. It'd be one thing if the products could be used local-stand-alone as long as I wanted, but when it's just killing the cloud where it all runs, it is just nearly guaranteeing a future waste of my time to re-find another solution.

I didn't think I had that risk with Firefox/Mozilla, but evidently I do, and that is just another reason now to start searching for a new browser...