>Thousands or millions of people used Hangouts, Google Reader, Google Code, or Picasa - they'd have been considered big YC successes.
Other than google reader I doubt any of these would have gotten traction at all without big g behind them.
Other than google reader I doubt any of these would have gotten traction at all without big g behind them.
Google Code: GitHub sold to Microsoft for a good chunk of change. GitLab, Bitbucket, Source Hut, all seem to be doing fine.
Hangouts: Instagram, Snapchat, Facebook Messenger, WhatsApp, WeChat, Facebook Portal, Matrix/Riot.im, iMessage, Skype is maybe back from the dead depending on who you ask (certainly not kids, though). It's almost easier to ask who isn't in the Messenger game right now. The fact that Google managed to fumble two huge market share leads between Google Talk and Hangouts is maybe only equaled by Microsoft's multiple, complicated fumbles of MSN Messenger and Skype.
So if Google is going to launch something under the Google brand they either have to be happier with things that aren't making 10s of billions, or not make so many efforts and burning their users/customers/devs at every step. Why as someone downstream do I want to dedicate my time and money to their product when they've shown that unless it becomes a massive success it will be folded?