Google is Imploding and Has Become a Danger to Web Innovation

I was not happy when Google closed JotSpot family with little warning late last year. Now, we read various announcements that Jaiku (Twitter type service) is in some kind of weird development limbo, Dodgeball will go away (actually, I thought it was already gone), Google Notebook will not accept new users, uploads to Google Video will be disabled, and that awful Lively is...well, that is another weird one. I wonder if the great GrandCentral voice phone service is next to be disappeared by the Google men in black squad. I sure hope not since I use that service!

Google is imploding and taking a lot of good services with it. This is a very sad state for we mere mortals (end-users).

The Age of IBM was replaced by the Age of Microsoft which was replaced by the Age of Google (and possibly the concurrent Age of Apple). Google is clearly not an industry leader any more. And, although I believe that "Apple > Steve Jobs", Jobs' departure (temporary or not) is probably worrying a lot of people. So, who's out there to take up where Google and Apple have left off?

While I am happy for web service creators who make a mint by selling to Google, it really looks like selling to Google is now the same as shutting down the service or at least making it unavailable to new users.