There's so much "that was the day Google died" sentiment in this thread, while in the same ten years the share price of GOOG has gone up from $19.87 to $90.63 (adjusting for splits), wildly outperforming the rest of the market. Goes to show that the company considers a much wider audience than just the tech crowd when making key product decisions.
You are confusing "the day Google died" with "the day the old Google died".
For a long time there Google was a cool company that was more than just something to make money. It was doing all this other stuff that didn't make money but made the world better.
These days it does about the same amount of "good" as any other company in the Fortune 100.
I don't know if you noticed, but the economic system you've built outright punishes companies and their CEOs if they don't extract maximum value and follow the herd.
