Tell me a mainstream (for Google scale) service that shut down. Offline Trips, Reader, Inbox, etc do not count. A couple of million users (at max) are just not enough. If bigger things shut down they either have a replacement or they are Google+. And no one complained when that was shut down.

Also Stadia has a subscription basis. Cloud gaming is just too important to let Microsoft win. Just like cloud in general.

Regarding the primary business argument. This is exactly what they are hedging against. Google knows ad revenue can‘t grow forever. Regulation might be coming. Cloud and stuff like this will have to take more and more of the load.

> Offline Trips, Reader, Inbox, etc do not count. A couple of million users (at max) are just not enough.

What if Stadia under-performs their financial expectations? What if it under-performs those expectations for 2-4 years?

I'm not certain that Google will shut-down Stadia in that time-frame, but I'm absolutely not certain that it will also be running at that point.

I'm extremely confident that Valve won't shut down Steam in that time-frame, though.

What if Google takes away enough revenue with Stadia? Then Valve may no be able to keep Steam up in the time frame.

> A couple of million users (at max) are just not enough.

Are you taking it as self-evident that Stadia will have more than a couple million users?

> Also Stadia has a subscription basis.

So did fiber.

Fiber is still serving customers. Not sure what you're referring to.

I believe he's referring to something like this: https://gizmodo.com/when-google-fiber-abandons-your-city-as-...

I believe there is a pretty big untapped market of gamers that are more than casual mobile gamers but not enough so to buy their own hardware. 120.- a year means you‘d have to play for 20 years until you reach the cost of top line gaming hardware. And a subscription doesn‘t depreciate.

Fiber is different I think because of shitty regulation that favors incumbents and the insane cost of financing a physical network.