This story was sent to my by an ex-Googler colleague of mine with a "hahaha this sounds like you" which I take as the greatest compliment.

Having been a Sr Mgr at Google myself for a few years, I can tell you that one of the reason for the "deprecation disease" is the dynamics of promotions at Google: if you've ever had the pleasure (!) of sitting at "calibration meetings" all the talk was about "impact" and you can be pretty sure "he maintained an old API and saved thousands of customers from the misery and burden or rewriting their app" came up exactly never.

You only got credit for some "impactful, Googley" new-fangled API/Service, which also meant (oopla) deprecating what was there before.

Which is also why, if anyone is dumb enough to use any Google gadget/service/application, well, they deserve all the pain they get when (inevitably) the rug is pulled from beneat their feet.

And I laugh at them.