Well ... that implies a long-term strategy with the actor assuming it's a zero-sum game. The other possibility is that Google is simply following a completely

Well ... that implies a long-term strategy with the actor assuming it's a zero-sum game. The other possibility is that Google is simply following a completely economic strategy and that each of the decisions described would end up maximizing their return. I think the real question is "why did we accept so many Beta services, knowing that there was no guarantee they'd be brought to market". If we'd only let them be a search company, would this even be a problem?