Actually, I'm kinda glad they're phasing stuff out. It shows courage to do that, a lesson probably hard learned at google. They have a myriad of products, but would probably do much better with them if they thoroughly finished them before release.
Yes, one of the things Larry Page talked about in the earnings call yesterday was aggressive project pruning and focus. I agree that this is a good sign of Page's leadership.
The danger lies in being a company with a reputation of launching stuff and then not sticking with them. At some point that starts harming adoption levels of new products.
Edit to comment below:
"Trying and failing is a far better outcome than never having tried at all" is a great mantra for individuals or even small startups, but I am not sure how it applies here. I am still bitter over Google abandoning Notebook (which I was quite a heavy user of) and canning Calendar Public Search (search!!). I then reluctantly allowed my team to use Wave, only to have that one canned after building a process around it. No, it is not better for me that they tried and changed their minds (they did NOT "fail"
technically), because I could have picked another product at the time that did intend to stick around.
People look at Google, with all the money and people that it has, and ask "How much could it POSSIBLY cost to keep Code Search going? How is it possible that Google can't afford it?". The only answer I can come up with is (1) It can afford it (2) But it doesn't care to.
So sure, if you are happy to see Google launch stuff that it has no commitment to, great for you. I'm having better luck taking chances with startups and their products. At least they have skin in the game.
Edit #2: @joebadmo - but that is exactly what I think when I see a new Google product - "will it reach such large levels of adoption so that Google will keep it". And I keep getting it wrong - even for products like Wave and Code Search which I thought surely they are used internally and so will be kept around if only because of that - nope, either they are not used internally (if not, why not?) or even that is not protection enough.
Sure, startups and small-person concerns are also risky propositions, but let's not forget the numbers. 100,000 users are a "failure" for google, but they are a wild success for a small startup, at least the ones not looking for a big exit. If you inlcude app writers as "startups", their longevity is phenomenal - I have never had an app stop working on me because somebody turned a sever off somewhere. Perhaps I have been freakishly lucky. The only other product I have had to stop using because it was pulled was wesabe.com.
I would definitely not base any sort of important business function on any free Google beta product without seriously considering the difficulty of migrating upon shutdown of said service.
I assume that a major criterion for Google shutting down a service is low usage. For them, that constitutes failure. Very few people were using Notebook, Calendar Search, Wave, or Code Search. I'm sure it's fairly simple to calculate the cost benefit of devoting even minimal resources to a product that 1. doesn't make money; and 2. doesn't substantially make the web better for some minimum threshold of people.
Google is one of the richest companies in the world and could afford a lot of things, but that's not justification that it should.
You're right that there's an interesting tension between starting/failing fast and getting people to trust that a product will stick around. But I don't actually think that's a big part of the calculation for most people. When Google releases a new product, I usually go either "Ooh, that sounds awesome, I'm signing up for the beta immediately," or "Not interested, moving on." I rarely go "I'm not going to use this because it probably won't get enough users to last."
I'm glad to hear that going with startup technologies is going well for you, but the danger seems just as big. Startups fail all the time, and you have no recourse afterward.
I would guess the other half of this initiative would be to only launch projects that have plans that involve profit. Like I understand killing something off if it doesn't catch on, but I don't see how Google Code Search could ever make Google much money over their normal search.
I hope you're wrong, because I kind of like how willing Google is to start crazy projects.
I also think that making money directly shouldn't necessarily be the sole motivator for projects for Google. Google makes money as people use the web. The better they make the web, the better it is for Google.
I second Joe's sentiment here. I would much prefer discussing how Google abandoned a project, rather than never having tried it at all. Trying and failing is a far better outcome than never having tried at all.
I agree with you to the extend: some products needs to be cut.
However, the problem is that Google is synonym for search and getting out search business even for niche is a very dangerous move.
That allows small companies to attack them from low-end and then slowly growing (from code-search, they add bug search, then add stack-overflow search, then social search, ...) and eventually they can become a Google replacement.
Actually, I'm kinda glad they're phasing stuff out. It shows courage to do that, a lesson probably hard learned at google. They have a myriad of products, but would probably do much better with them if they thoroughly finished them before release.