Actually, yes. I paid for Sketchup and for extra storage space on gmail / drive. I also paid for Google Apps for Business for two of my startups. My disgruntlement isn't because I'm upset that I didn't get what I paid for, but because Google's practices have become primarily damaging to themselves: I don't think it is helping them win eyeballs.
Personally, I date this to the announcement that they would be putting "more wood behind fewer arrows".[1] Prior to that, Google's product offerings had been comprehensive but scattershot -- but most of their individual products were lean, elegant, and very effective at what they did. By putting "more wood" into those products, they've somehow fallen into a very old-world fallacy of software development: the idea that quality scales with manpower. But overloading a team with software engineers doesn't produce better software -- just bloated software. As somebody who is generally an admirer of Google's, I find this unfortunate.
Personally, I date this to the announcement that they would be putting "more wood behind fewer arrows".[1] Prior to that, Google's product offerings had been comprehensive but scattershot -- but most of their individual products were lean, elegant, and very effective at what they did. By putting "more wood" into those products, they've somehow fallen into a very old-world fallacy of software development: the idea that quality scales with manpower. But overloading a team with software engineers doesn't produce better software -- just bloated software. As somebody who is generally an admirer of Google's, I find this unfortunate.
1: http://googleblog.blogspot.co.uk/2011/07/more-wood-behind-fe...