And what happens if Keikai fails long before Google gets rid of sheets? I get that Google has a habit of killing things off, but they are often things that are unpopular. Sheets is far from unpopular.
Yep, I agree it's always a risk; but if you were really concerned you could perhaps acquire a small outfit like Keikai and protect yourself. Your money just isn't interesting to Google so that's never an option.
And I don't believe it's true to say they've only killed unpopular things. Anything outside of the core business (and I will argue Sheets/Docs is outside) is up for the chop.
So 4 million G Suite business customers and 70 million educational G Suite customers is outside the core business? I would say 74 million customers is a major part of any business.
G Suite is a lot more than just Google Sheets. And while it's not advertising, I think you are right and I was a bit hasty to declare it as outside their core business.
They do not have 74 million paying customers. However, I agree that the "free" version is safe for as long as the enterprise offering continues to do well (5 million PAYING users as of Feb 2019: https://cloud.google.com/blog/products/g-suite/5-million-and...).
