Google should start a lifetime project so help people have a better apriori understanding of where and when its going.

The Google way seems to be to try new stuff without much hesitation and then kill things which don't work out for them. I don't think they know exactly where they are going - which makes perfectly sense since future is hard to predict.

Which is quite stupid PR wise. They're relying on a few major household names to be able to do guinea pig product testing, otherwise their brand would evaporate.

Including their audience in the process would bring back the feeling of early google making one's life easier.

Wonder if it's better to think of Google as an "intelligence" company rather than software / search / advertising? They often seem to start projects to learn about the market and other companies, rather than for any direct business purpose.

Or, to try and understand people's dynamics and behavior as good as they understand tech.

Agreed. It seems they'll hype up and push a service then shut it down at the drop of a pin at this point. It's not great for their brand if you're a company that wants a reliable, long term solution.

I agree but how is it any worse than a start-up trying the idea and then dying in a similar fashion?

It's worse for google because their brand is attached to it. Shutting down a branded internal "startup" can cause negative sentiment to be attached to the overall brand (as evidenced in comments here). Whereas with a startup there isn't really a lingering negative impact on a parent brand because there is no parent brand.

yeah worse for the brand of Google but not for us as we are just as likely to have it fail as if it were a startup.

Startups that die do affect the overall perception of startups, but at the point of going out of business, the business no longer cares about its brand perception.

> It seems they'll hype up and push a service then shut it down at the drop of a pin at this point.

I'm looking forward to the Google car.

A way around that would be to start products outside the Google brand, and only "adopt" them when they have gained significant traction, and long-term internal support.

that's your opinion, if they shut them down it means they are not totally useful, that there are better alternatives, and they provide migration guides I guess

Infinite loop

Infinite jest