I was chatting with this awesome guy known as Gary Price, you know he is the news editor at Search Engine Watch. We were talking about all the cool things Google releases (and Yahoo and especially Ask Jeeves) but one thing we noticed was that Google every now and then takes away these things. For example:
(1) It has been two days and Google Earth Download is still temporarily not available.
(2) Google Sitemaps was up for a bit, then Google Sitemaps was Slashdotted to the Ground - its back up now.
(3) Google Web Accelerator Closed and seems to still be offline, no way to get to it.
(4) And forget about Google X coming back ever.
I am sure there are many others I left out. Seems interesting, announce things, they work for a little bit, get the press and forget about it. Then announce new things, and repeat.
I have done that with a few tools, but simply do to lack of resources. I know how hard it is to manage the human technology resources of a 7 person Web firm - I can not imagine what Google has to go through. I started a thread at Search Engine Watch Forums named Google Giving & Then Taking Back? asking "Is this just a PR ploy or a resources issue or something else?"
