No one can predict ahead of time what will be a success, and what won't. That's the beauty of making lots of bets, and having the fittest survive. There's no formula for success, no matter how many business gurus write articles saying otherwise. You try an experiment, you collect data, you iterate. You climb lots of mountains, sometimes you climb the wrong ones.<p>Google perceives itself as a technology company. Hire smart people, try lots of things, most of them will fail. Some will stick. What people are bashing Google over is what collectively, angels and venture capitals do every day, only this time, the venture capitalist is Google, and they are investing in oodles of their own internal projects.<p>Why do this? To avoid the Innovators Dilemma.<p>IMHO, the best thing we can do to guard against the downsides of disruption is to ensure transparency of data. You should expect products to die every couple of years. Reader outlasted most at 8 years. How long will Pinterest be around? Or Vine? Path?<p>The problem today is that most companies are not transparent, they are building siloed clouds, and so when they die, content dies with them.<p>Worse is non-textual data, like books, music, and film. Not only do you have siloed clouds, you have heavy use of DRM, which means purchases are non-transferrable, often even if the company themselves wants it to be.<p>The lesson is, invest your energy in supporting services with data transparency. Demand it. Not just from Google, but from Twitter, Facebook, Apple, Microsoft, et al.