There is two alternatives that I can think of. (a) For things (eg. Reader, Google Wallet for Digital Goods) that could be viable businesses in their own right

There is two alternatives that I can think of. (a) For things (eg. Reader, Google Wallet for Digital Goods) that could be viable businesses in their own right with some modifications, spin them off as small companies. (b) Open source the project they no longer have interest in. (as was done for Google Wave, which arguably wasn't necessary because the level of interest in Wave at that point was quite low) In this case (and perhaps they already have this), I would suggest that they allow anyone to discover all the projects on Google Code and export them such that they could be imported into other code hosting sites, allowing everyone else to build a Google Code alternative.