That’s because the company is basically designed like a synergistic portfolio where even money-losing businesses have a purpose in the big picture.
And that’s where Google fails. It’s very well known how ruthless Google can be at killing business that don’t produce tangible results. The Alphabet re-org clearly showcases that they are playing a game of optimizing the allocation of their assets. That mentality bleeds down.
Unfortunately, you can’t run a Cloud Business like that. To Google’s merit, it seems that they are not running their cloud unit with that mentality (I don’t think I have heard about GCP services that shut down). But it’s clear there’s a generalized feeling in the industry that Google can at any point become impatient with GCP, leaving many stranded.
For Google to be a distant third in the Cloud game must be pretty hard. This is something that plays to their strengths and yet they are hardly closing the gap.
The big difference is that the companies that are winning (Amazon and Microsoft) are willing to lose in some areas to win in others. They excel at that. Google on the other hand seems to have a hard time with that shit...
Case in point; AWS SimpleDB. SimpleDB hasn't been available on the AWS console for years (since 2015?) but is still accessible through the SDKs and API calls. They don't promote it or even update it (AFAIK) but it's still there and you can still use it. Amazing!
As long as they don't visibly break it, that provides a reputation that is hard to beat without something much more than one year notice as a binding commitment.
But Google has an absolutely dreadful image to drop products and features at the drop of a hat.
Take Microsoft as a counter example, which went through absolute crazy length to provide backward compatibility for their products.
Google just doesn't have that credibility on long term commitments to bank your entire enterprise on its products.
I think this is one of the reasons MS Teams has been so successful, even when there are better apps out there that provide all the same functionality and more.
But for whatever reason, when Bezos brags about how making failed products is a core part of the company culture because it shows you’re tajing risks, HN shrugs. When MS kills off billion dollar consumer bets after only a couple of years, HN just goes “lol, why would anyone have used Mixer”.
It is a clear double standard that seems to have happened since memes are self-reinforcing.
Also, I'm guessing larger companies could push for certain longer deprecation policies as part of their contracts on certain features. I have no insights here, just assuming from what other people on this thread are saying.
(Googler, opinions are my own)