Where did you pull that 80% from? Or you just feel like it's 80%?

Most of Google's big projects are still alive today. Search, Gmail, Android, GSuite, Chrome, Drive, AdWords, YouTube, etc.

There are a few big projects that they shut down but most are smaller projects.

Do we want Google to just launch products that they will keep alive indefinitely whether it succeeds or not?

Should Google not have started its self-driving car initiative, Calico, Fiber? Yeah, Glass failed. So what?

Do you want a company to innovate? Have them try different things. You can't change the world by only doing things with 100% certainty.

80% sounds quite high but I wouldn't be surprised if the number is around there. Google are big enough to take risks and try things that don't work out. There are 95 official Google products in the Wikipedia 'discontinued products' listing - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_Google_products#Discon..., but that's not very accurate in that it doesn't mention things have failed but are limping along, and it includes things that were discontinued but live on in other products (eg Wave merged with Docs).

It's not entirely unreasonable to suggest Google have 20 successful products for their ~95 discontinued ones though.. which would work out as 80% 'failed'.

Google bought YouTube after it was already hugely successful. I don't think it makes the best example here.

I wouldn't characterize hemorrhaging money and facing lawsuits from all of major media players as being successful.

http://www.nbcnews.com/id/15196982/ns/business-us_business/t...

Why is that significant? How many projects has GE or IBM discontinued? Google is at the peak of its profitability today, so whatever is being done to products seems to be working out.

Please don't post uncivilly, even when someone else is wrong.