Why doesn't Google spin-off Reader?

2 points by bcks 13y ago ↗ HN

By now Google has a fairly established track record of developing products and killing them. But why wouldn't they ever sell these? Spin them off as independent companies? Or put them up for auction? If the problem is that they are not making enough, why not cash in on all that investment? I can't think of when they've ever done anything like this with one of their services and can only speculate why. But I can imagine lots of companies who would love to inherit a hard-core audience as large as Reader.

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Semaphor 13y ago ↗

For instance, it was Google Crawler that gave the system ability to make lightening fast connections and also bring up recommendations. It is one of the main reasons it cannot be open sourced. The systems is too intertwined with Google’s search and other infrastructure to be sold as well.

http://gigaom.com/2013/03/13/chris-wetherll-google-reader/

sp332 13y ago ↗

Google has a couple of massive databases that store basically all the data for all of their services and internal tools as well. And Google Reader is tied to your Google account. So to spin it off, you'd have to re-write the backend, and the front-end, so you'd practically be starting from scratch anyway.