Iron Mountain was a mushroom farm for 20 years, until the mushroom market crashed and the owner needed another use for his abandoned iron mine. Tandy Leather took a brief detour through consumer electronics, purchasing Radio Shack and selling the Tandy computer, before eventually going back to leather.
It took a mushroom market crash to ruin Iron Mountain. Was there a crash in people seeking help with stuff between Google launching & shutting down Helpouts?
The point is that Google didn't need Helpouts, Google Wallet, Google Reader, Google Checkout, etc. They have a core business. If one of those products had been their core business, they likely would have kept going. Each of the products they shutdown is typically profitable to some degree, or could be made profitable. Google shuts them down because they've have too little traction for Google to stay interested, but if they were companies in their own right, they would likely continue.
