All those acquisitions for talent made me think that a good business model would be to simply develop a clone of such a purchased-but-discontinued product (and of course keep developing it).
After all if you believe Lean Startup ideas, the biggest problem that a startup faces is an idea that has not been vetted by costumers.
I assume that even though those startups don't have products that are interesting enough for Google to keep working on them, in order to get noticed (and eventually bought) those startups had to show solid traction numbers so those ideas are already vetted by costumers. The biggest startup risk has been removed.
All that's left is good execution. It might not be a good business for Google, but could be a good business for a small team.
After all if you believe Lean Startup ideas, the biggest problem that a startup faces is an idea that has not been vetted by costumers.
I assume that even though those startups don't have products that are interesting enough for Google to keep working on them, in order to get noticed (and eventually bought) those startups had to show solid traction numbers so those ideas are already vetted by costumers. The biggest startup risk has been removed.
All that's left is good execution. It might not be a good business for Google, but could be a good business for a small team.