It's also surprising when you realize how rarely that assumption holds true. Far too many applications ship several versions without ever getting rid of the features that should never have been there in the first place. It's a testament to Google's reputation for quality (and long betas) that we feel we can safely assume that the marginal features will be removed or improved in a timely fashion.

Is there some history of this actually happening at Google? I can't recall any big products that have shed features. My recollection is obviously limited, but I'd love to hear of some examples. Shuttering whole products/services doesn't count to me.

Well, he lists the gmail-specific ones in the post. I guess users of services provided by startups later bought by Google could provide more data on this. Any Grandcentral or Jaiku users (off the top of my head, there are plenty more of course) care to tell us if anything was dropped before the Google release?

Well, for one, the man himself gave Gmail as example.

It didn't sound like Gmail was made public with the features. Sounded like they were removed before it went public.