I also noticed they seem to shutdown products when the main guy behind it leaves. Typically no one has interest in taking over because it was niche stuff with little chance to go big. Also, original guy would have already milked out credits and there is no career path at Google to be the maintainer in charge.

So the sequence of events are:

- founding guy leaves

- new guy becoming in charge sees career going down drain

- makes case for shutdown/half assed merge with other products to get out as soon as possible