dalks

It's not an email.

This is a false dichotomy and an unfair one. Firstly, fastmail is a paid product that may show you graphic ads if you are using their free tier. (https://www.fastmail.fm/help/advertising_web_interface_ads.h...)

To those who are arguing about advertisements not showing up in the Fastmail's paid tiers should also realize that there is the Google Apps for Business accounts, where you don't see ads. It also beats the popular 'if you are paying you are the product meme'.

> Still, that's pretty huge.

They are not monopolistic, like you said.

> they canceled Reader for such altruistic reasons

There is no evidence that it was done to bring more users to Reader (like the article suggested) either. They did allow you to takeout your reader content. So yes I do evidence that they hope that users find services that fit their needs.

Aah, I thought they just moved everyone from Hotmail to Outlook and that they are now the same thing. Unfortunately, I can't edit the post now.

So as you suggested, lets simply want to ignore Now, Android, Maps, Glasses and Self Driving cars:

Chrome: A hell lot of features that are pushing web forward, arguably the best development tools, significant contribution to Webkit (now to Blink), becoming platform for Chrome OS, v8 engine that serves as basis for NodeJs.

App Engine/Drive: So when Heroku/Dropbox does it, it can be called innovation but when GAE/Drive does it, it is just iteration? That's an insane standard to work against.

> doesn't even support formatting other than bold and italic, how's that for retrograde.

There is no way you could argue that supporting lists and headings will suddenly make Google+ an innovative product out of nowhere. What I find awesome are Hangouts and circles. They work very nicely for me, YMMV. You can set the entire profile to be hidden and no one will be smearing contents of your private life anywhere. I am not sure exactly is this complaint coming from.

No he is arguing that because Google closed down Reader, using any other service offered by Google is poor judgement while also stating that they don't innovate in many if not all product areas.

> HN on several occassionas

3 if I count correctly: Reader closedown (which, in my opinion, not a hit to open web at all), XMPP Federation issue (It's fixed now) and CalDAV whitelist (Not closedown, whitelist).

> de-factory monopoly

Not really:

  - Video: Till Oct '12, youtube's market share peaked at ~52%. [1]

  - Email: Gmail surpassed Outlook in market share only in Oct '12. [2]

  - Search: Google Search 67.5% as of March 15, 2013. [3]

And when they attempt to get out of markets so that other new companies can perform better, we get Reader like response.

> Google does not seem to care much about Internet standards

And how are you sure that FastMail and Vimeo (Alternatives suggested in the OP) are any better?

[1] http://videonuze.com/article/youtube-s-market-share-nudges-u...

[2] http://gigaom.com/2012/10/31/gmail-finally-beats-hotmail-acc...

[3] http://searchenginewatch.com/article/2255183/Google-Grabs-Mo...