That being said, I cannot help but wonder how what Google is doing is different than any startup working on a product. The differences might be that Google never tries to substantially change, improve or even market a product once it has been released. They throw it at the wall and that's it. If it sticks they keep it and it might get some love, but if it doesn't the entire thing gets axed. Another difference is that sometimes products seem to get cancelled for larger strategic reasons that the consumer doesn't care about. G+ seems to have lead to some of those.

All this can cause the user to feel like they might care more about a service than Google does. I think that's really the crux of the matter here. People don't want to commit in Google services anymore because Googled themselves doesn't seem all that committed. Startups are usually super committed to their product.

Edit: what makes this worse is that many services they've shut down could have easily supported a small to medium sized startup, especially a self funded one. It might not make sense at Google scale to run something like that, but it seriously damages consumer trust.

It tends to chip away at your confidence if you're looking at investing in their services.

The issue is that it's an established pattern, so it may limit adoption on other new services they launch.

If that happens often enough, I may just start off with the competitor.