Even if you have the resources to support something, should you if its not your core focus?
Personal I feel that Google is still run as a startup, which is fantastic however people expect Google to be a corporate company.
>> "people expect Google to be a corporate company."
It is a corporate company. When millions of people rely on your products you need to be careful when introducing new ones and pulling old ones. I don't think you can run a business like a startup forever if you have millions/billions of users. You cans till maintain some aspects of that startup culture but there are other aspects you have to leave behind. You have to think of how anything you do is going to affect people's long term view of you. The Reader shut down may not have affected a majority of Google's customers but now some people are wary to adopt new Google services. If you pull that kind of thing often enough you damage your long term prospects.
I meant startup as a culture not in the terms of funding.
The fact that Google starts and closes down products very frequently is evidence of this.
What about Google X? Isn't that a bit like a startup?
Maybe I meant to say that departments WITHIN Google are run like startups not Google itself.
