It's so stupid that they've got this reputation now. A lot of the things they've killed could've instead been sold/spun off instead. Shutting down successful services that are not successful enough by Google's standards has given them a bad rep at the same time as destroying value.
Reader could've been a successful company on its own for sure, for example. I wasn't a user of it, but there was enough people who loved it enough.
I think google builds stuff in a way where it depends on the google stack. That makes it harder to spin off or sell, as you'd basically have to re-write it.
Reader could've been a successful company on its own for sure, for example. I wasn't a user of it, but there was enough people who loved it enough.