Comment by Navarr

I really don't like things like this. A lot of these projects ended up as other projects or built into other projects.

Google checkout turned into Google Wallet. Google latitude ended up as part of the Google+ Identity overhaul.

There's also a lot of projects that are "labs" or "beta." Clearly they didn't gain the traction Google wanted from them.

Google's like any other startup on a project-by-project basis. If the idea doesn't work they pivot and drop it.