My suspicion is that Google employee's were seeing their dns fucked with at public wifi hotspots (something that was happening at the time) and decided to build their own dns for their own security. Being Google and having boat loads of server resources I imagine they decided they may as well make it public.
All those products that got killed mostly started that way, employee's wanted them and google had the money to make them happen. Eventually though if they're not growing, then who in google wants to work on them?
Did google also see it as a strategic way to make sure dns providers couldn't force search results elsewhere? Probably, but then as users WE certainly don't want dns providers fucking with dns in that manner either.
All those products that got killed mostly started that way, employee's wanted them and google had the money to make them happen. Eventually though if they're not growing, then who in google wants to work on them?
Did google also see it as a strategic way to make sure dns providers couldn't force search results elsewhere? Probably, but then as users WE certainly don't want dns providers fucking with dns in that manner either.