[saalweachter]

Some of it is probably a bit of me-too-ism, but keep in mind that both Microsoft and Google are huge companies with a large number of people working semi-autonomously. Sometimes a team of a half dozen or so has been working on something just like it for three years on-and-off and, having been beaten to the punch, they go ahead and launch whatever they have rather than let it go cold.

It's not terribly surprising that some of these ventures are short-lived and half-baked; there's a reason they hadn't launched earlier. But once you've spent three goddamn years of your life on something, you might as well try a Hail Mary before the project is shut down.