[gwern]

> I wonder if Google Maps could close down....

No. Google has bought what must be dozens of companies at this point just to support and improve Maps (Waze being the latest), it's reportedly profitable & popular, with the continued rise of mobile I'd expect it to become more important, and my little survival analysis (http://www.gwern.net/Google%20shutdowns) gives it 87% odds of surviving to May 2018 (which IMO is too low).

[doubt_me]

Also there are a bunch of government people who work on it I think.

I saw a bunch of public linkedIn profiles with NSA analysts and people in the private sector with google maps listed as experience for whatever reason

[josephkern]

Google maps and Google earth are used extensively for imagery analysis and intelligence work. They aren't working with the maps team so much as using it as a tool.

[mcintyre1994]

That page is always really interesting when it comes up, but have you considered adding data for existing product improvements by acquisition? You include a variable for whether it was initially acquired or not, but perhaps big acquisitions clearly for the purpose of improving a product are a strong signal of longevity?

[gwern]

That's not a bad idea, but at this point it would be hard to go back and be able to classify each product by how many other products were merged into it. That information is not always clearly laid out publicly (to say the least).