I agree with Jeepman. Given the problems that people with my worldview have had when employed at Google, I'm not going to shed any tears for them, but when understanding that everything they do is free for consumers (apart from selling chromebooks), it is inevitable that they stop spending their ad revenues on services that they just cant monetize. I was dissappointed back in the days of Windows XP when Google Desktop search was given the axe (years and years before this article was written), but given that they couldn't find a way to make money from it, it really didn't surprise me.