[csallen]

Yeah, there are costs for sure. But this is "zombie software" with millions, probably tens of millions of users. And Google has ~80,000 engineers? And the company prints an incredible amount of money.

I think the real cost/risk here is not financial, but strategic, i.e. preventing a loss of focus.

[bonesss]

The common critique of Googles actions - the organization has profits, therefore there is no problem engaging in less profitable activities — strikes me as superficial.

It’s not about investing any given portion of revenues, it’s investing optimally. There are opportunity costs that must be considered in investments (and that means Net Present Value calculations).

Google’s revenue and profits are for the shareholders. When revenue is directed back into the business the question simply isn’t if the whole business will make money, it’s if this investment is optimally profitable considering all the alternatives. If a support engineer on Google+ generates $X over 5 years, but that same resource would generate $3X working on Gemini then dictating eternal Google+ support is robbing future Google of revenue.

Investments need to be individually justified, but also better than the alternatives to make fiscal sense. Even though that sucks for pleased consumers.

[csallen]

Yes, but this is exactly my point. You can't perfectly calculate exactly how much revenue is lost due to breaking trust with users because you repeatedly sunset projects that they've relied on.

Maybe if Google had those support engineers on Google+ for 5 years generating $X, that would've created enough trust that Gemini could now generate $4X.

[janalsncm]

It’s also hard to estimate the lost revenue from projects which aren’t started because your staff is busy maintaining legacy projects.

[csallen]

Sure, but I don't think Google's primary issue is that they aren't starting enough projects.