Spaces was never used by any major groups. It was an experiment and it ended. Using it to fuel the "Google shuts down everything" meme is just silly and makes the memers look silly.

Google has never shut down a major product. The closest thing they've come to is shutting down Google Reader, which was popular in the tech crowd but not mainstream in any way. That hurt. I totally agree with feeling the pain here.

They've never shut down anything of consequence besides this. Lots of little experimental things but nothing of real value.

They've also transitioned lots of things which does not count as shutting it down because you can still use the damn product. Latitude became Google+ Locations which became Maps Locations. They changed the name. Big whoop.

From an end user perspective the meme is a total joke. From a developer perspective there's a bit more truth but it's not as bad as the joke entails.

Sure they shut down some APIs but they give months or even year+ notices and pretty much universally always have an API with roughly equivalent functionality to move to. They rarely leave devs in the cold. It has happened but the vast majority of the time you just swap a few lines or a module and you are back up and running with probably better features.

Their PR has taken a hit because people don't like to do their research. They just shit on Google because it's fun.