Thing is, some of these projects that people are talking about were done in 20% time, so they never really went through most of the google UI "inspection". I agree however that the latest stuff has taken a big dive. You can't really criticize Google desktop, it was the first one to come out with desktop searching. If you had said that they have not updated, I would agree, but I think they themselves can see that Microsoft can do a better job, since Microsoft knows the API and internals like no other.
Base is an interesting idea, it let's you post any arbitrary data, add tags, and other information, and then have the Google database store it, and if it is useful for a search done by a user, show it as a possible result. I can still see it working.
Google Pack even-though it is just a bundle of third party stuff, is extremely easy for me to deploy, as it keeps everything in the pack neatly up to date, meaning I have less work to do as a tech guy. I don't think it was meant to be really anything more.
Talk is one app I have not used, but for some reason it appeals to my brothers and sister, and my dad's fiancee because there are almost no buttons at all, everything is simple and straight forward, it almost requires no thinking.
As for Pay-Pal, I just don't know. I have seen people's accounts become frozen just because they sold something for $1500 on eBay, which was valid. Pay-Pal still does not really have a good reputation, it is however still the biggest because eBay owns them. We will see what happens when Google Pay comes out, for now I will wait.