I view that strategy rather positively myself. If you are willing to shut down services that don't work without too much hassle, that opens you up to trying more things in the first place. If something works, it stays, if it doesn't work, it gets canned, and the resources are free to be used for something else.
Products and services of many other companies end up in one of two states far too often:
1) "Painted in a corner" type of situations - the product lives on a bad design premise, which it is very hard or impossible to get away from, but the company sticks to it anyway, and pushes hard to rescue a failing product.
2) "State of disrepair" - the product didn't become popular, but the company isn't comfortable killing it, so it lives on barely on life support, often with glaring issues.
Its refreshing for a huge company like Google to mix it up and actually try things, without the fear of having to maintain it for an eternity.
Of course as a user that makes it a bit harder to "commit" to a service if you don't know how long it'll be around. But the world changes, just go with the flow.
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Topic: Google -- Survival of the Fittest? (Read 1441 times)