> The Helpouts community includes some engaged and loyal contributors, but unfortunately, it hasn't grown at the pace we had expected. (from helpouts.google.co

> The Helpouts community includes some engaged and loyal contributors, but unfortunately, it hasn't grown at the pace we had expected. (from helpouts.google.com) Google feels more and more like a company that suffers from gigantomania (a nice service "hasn't grown at the pace we had expected" - so it should be no less than Google Search?) on the one hand, and inability to bring new products to the market on the other. I have a theory that there is no such thing as bad idea. Any initial idea, be it seemingly good or bad in the beginning, requires refinement, development and a lot of solid work. If you look at any successful product or service today, the initial idea wouldn't have necessarily be qualified as good. It's a thousand of new derivative and auxiliary ideas that make the original one interesting and eventually also successful. So according to this theory, if a company shuts down its own products one after another, and screws up others that used to work well - that company is clearly malfunctioning. In case of Google it doesn't seem to be bad engineering, in fact Google can be considered one of the top few companies in the world in terms of technical quality. It seems to be more on the product management side. Google, you need to change, fast. I have a feeling your countdown timer may have started already.