Google 411 could have been considered an end goal too. It too was concrete and monetizeable. Instead it was actually a way to get a whole lot of natural languag

Google 411 could have been considered an end goal too. It too was concrete and monetizeable. Instead it was actually a way to get a whole lot of natural language voice samples. When it stopped being useful in that regard, they didn't turn around and try to monetize it, they just killed it.