I mean if Google's goal is to maintain it's monopolistic lead in the search/ad space, that means gobbling up as many of the really talented devs as possible to

I mean if Google's goal is to maintain it's monopolistic lead in the search/ad space, that means gobbling up as many of the really talented devs as possible to keep them out of the hands of would-be competitors. Really talented devs want to work on new and exciting shit, so google continuously mints projects and kills them off when they are no longer shiny and new. Seems to me things are working as intended.