@solo said:

... lets wait and see.

Agreed. Until the next release of SU appears there's no way to know Trimble's intentions, anything they say now is public relations-speak, it may or may not be translated into actions.

When @Last sold SU to Google there was a great deal of speculation amongst the users, the optimists were excited about the huge resources Google would bring to bear on future development, others worried about what would happen to the development team and still others feared that Google would 'devalue' SU by releasing a free version as they had done with another app (I forget what it was).

If I remember correctly (and it's quite possible that I don't), @Last themselves stated at the time that the buyout would boost development, but in reality SU has largely stagnated in Google hands. At the time Google stated that the buyout would not result in any @Last people being 'let go', but behind the scenes some had already been asked to clear out their desks. And Google stated that they had no intention of releasing a free version, only to announce the free version soon after.

I'm glad Google won't be stifling SU's potential any longer, what Trimble will do with it remains to be seen but I'm not holding my breath. I love SU dearly and it's an important part of my workflow, but it became clear to me years ago that I couldn't pin any hopes on SU evolving much beyond what it was then (V5/6) or growing in the direction I needed to go. I looked to Luxology's modo as the next rising star and I'm happy to say that 5 versions later its still evolving faster than I can learn its new tricks.

I hope one day I'll be as excited about a new release of SketchUp.