dangrossman

Thanks for the heads-up! HN Replies is up and running though, and notified me of a test comment I just made. If anyone would like to troubleshoot their subscription, feel free to email me.

The WH website switched from Drupal to WordPress in 2017.

Gmail is the only product you listed that Google started itself.

Google Maps was built on the acquisitions of Where 2 Technologies, Keyhole and ZipDash.

Chrome is based on WebKit, built at Apple.

Waymo's hardware came from the acquisition of 510 Systems, and the software came from the acquihiring of the team that developed Stanford's self-driving cars for the 2005 and 2007 DARPA challenges, who brought their code with them.

Almost all the things in this list were acquired from someone else that built them, rebranded, and then given away for free, taking much of the money out of the market that allowed that product to be built. Without Google giving away the one winner they chose to acquire, you'd have options again.

I built my free web stats service in 2004 because I couldn't afford an Urchin license. Google bought Urchin Live and rebranded it as Google Analytics, and gave it away for free. My service barely pays for itself 20+ years later, but I'm still here and would have an offering for that market on day one that Google Analytics shut down. So would dozens of others.

From Reddit discussions, if they can be trusted, there is nobody who can remove Matt from any position. It's a private company and the investors were given non-voting shares.