"creating products that consumers use and then killing those same products a few years later"
You're right, but this is a product that ran for eight years. It was free, showed all signs of being killed for several years now, and can be migrated to another service. I think Google's brand can survive dropping a few products like this after 8 years if they're not going anywhere...assuming of course they continue to innovate elsewhere.
I am not betting for or against that assumption. I will note that they have nothing as big as search (except maybe YouTube) and Microsoft and Amazon have been competing and rendering ad-supported search irrelevant, respectively.
You're right, but this is a product that ran for eight years. It was free, showed all signs of being killed for several years now, and can be migrated to another service. I think Google's brand can survive dropping a few products like this after 8 years if they're not going anywhere...assuming of course they continue to innovate elsewhere.