Regardless of legal aspects it's hard to ignore that Google is now very much in the business of putting to sleep innovative products. Either they acquire the st

Regardless of legal aspects it's hard to ignore that Google is now very much in the business of putting to sleep innovative products. Either they acquire the startup and no longer invest in it, or drive it out of the search results, or invent it first in their "moonshot" division and file patents with no intention of executing on them. (Note that the innovators themselves may not fare badly if they get acquired and/or employed by Google. But their product will at best stagnate, at worst be killed shortly.) In the last decade Google has no longer brought to the consumer anything major like Gmail, Google Maps or Chrome. I doubt it's because of inability to execute - they can and will hire large numbers of very smart people. It seems more like a conscious decision to err on the side of maintaining the ~2010 status quo.