Praise be the skeptical! It allows the courageous easy advantages. SLAs are almost worthless. And, really, has Google ever retired something like this (i.e., not an acquisition, not Google Reader, etc)?
ReplyTo aros: The two main criteria I would have are: 1) not an acquisition and 2) important development/developer service. I can't think of any and didn't see any after a cursory look at the list.
I think SLAs are literally worthless since I don't think they encourage even slightly more effort in minimizing whatever issues the customer is concerned about. No one wants servers to go down, no one wants to shut down a service. That a few Google bucks might be on the line would have zero impact.
