I don't think this will impact Google too much. Even in the case they get pushed off the top the way MSN, AOL or MySpace did, they are also in the hardware market, not to mention Google has become leading inventor, technology company and also have a massive amount of funds to get back into business somewhere else.
They won't just disappear like that.
I think it will be Google downfall if they don't change.
No one wants to deal with a company that can shut you down any moment for no good reason and with no way to resolve the situation. If they continue like that, their dominance may be slowly eroded by smaller companies that actually care for all of their customers. It won't happen overnight, but once the movement has gained momentum, it will be hard for a giant like Google to adjust.
I can't help but think that if Google is successful, the entire endeavor will end up like Reader: Google wipes out the competition, decides that they no longer want to run the service, end it, and there is no-one left to fill the void.
Killing it makes very little sense when the vast majority of the capital investment has been made already.
Further, whatever possible (unlikely) brand damage a moderately unsuccessful piece of hardware would do to Google it would pale in comparison to what would happen if they pulled it from the market.
Google isn't the kind of company that needs things to be an overnight success, I think in the long run they will gain ground.
Google is essentially a piece of international infrastructure at this point. If it went out of existence, the productivity of millions of people would take at least a minor nose dive and the funnels for user conversion for businesses would change drastically overnight leading to a macroscopic restructuring of business priorities.
I know you said that in jest, but in all seriousness, I think search and ads will definitely be around since they are the #1 player and making boatloads of money from search and ads.
Google seems to have a tendency to shut down products that meet the following criteria:
[1] Free products that could have millions or billions of users, but no revenue or not enough revenue to justify a team working on it
[2] Free or paid products in which Google is NOT #1
I am as shocked as everyone else that Google would consider shutting down GCP if it's not #2 by 2023. I would have thought they would treat enterprise business very differently from their consumer business ... but I guess not.
I am also extremely skeptical they'll be able to make it to #2 over the next 4 years. So I guess we might as well say goodbye to GCP at this point.
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