I'm not sure of the 'milking users' (which seems more pejorative than I feel about the situation). It's more of a 'business rules' than 'loose rules.'
I was at Google from 2006 to 2010, I arrived just after they decided "mini kitchens" (which were amazing collections of snacks and drinks near every bunch of engineers) needed to be reigned in, and left just after the first of the big purges of non-project projects. I was fortunate that since I had worked for Eric Schmidt at Sun we knew each other enough that I felt comfortable asking him pointed questions, like "Uh, seriously? What does changing out the juice supplier (Odwalla) for a cheaper one do for employess?" And he would often answer with insights into Google 'growing up' in many ways the same way Sun did. Much of the fiscal questions were being driven by Patrick Pichette who was the new CFO and trying to get a handle on where all the money was going, and of course in 2009 there was the economic crash and it really drove home the issue of "How much money is 'too much?'" (answer none) and "How much money do we need for the worse case scenario?" (answer all we can get) and questions of "Gee we burn money like gasoline, what would happen if suddenly nobody wanted to advertise on the Internet?" Those kinds of questions lead to a maturation process around money, and making sure that all the money that could be in the bank, was in the bank. Just good business. Challenging to make compelling user experiences though, although Apple had done so.
So long way of saying I don't think that Google is "milking" their customers so much as they are no longer giving quite the value they used to, choosing instead to keep that additional value for themselves.
I was at Google from 2006 to 2010, I arrived just after they decided "mini kitchens" (which were amazing collections of snacks and drinks near every bunch of engineers) needed to be reigned in, and left just after the first of the big purges of non-project projects. I was fortunate that since I had worked for Eric Schmidt at Sun we knew each other enough that I felt comfortable asking him pointed questions, like "Uh, seriously? What does changing out the juice supplier (Odwalla) for a cheaper one do for employess?" And he would often answer with insights into Google 'growing up' in many ways the same way Sun did. Much of the fiscal questions were being driven by Patrick Pichette who was the new CFO and trying to get a handle on where all the money was going, and of course in 2009 there was the economic crash and it really drove home the issue of "How much money is 'too much?'" (answer none) and "How much money do we need for the worse case scenario?" (answer all we can get) and questions of "Gee we burn money like gasoline, what would happen if suddenly nobody wanted to advertise on the Internet?" Those kinds of questions lead to a maturation process around money, and making sure that all the money that could be in the bank, was in the bank. Just good business. Challenging to make compelling user experiences though, although Apple had done so.
So long way of saying I don't think that Google is "milking" their customers so much as they are no longer giving quite the value they used to, choosing instead to keep that additional value for themselves.