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I'm surprised by how many technical people are butt hurt over every subsequent shutdown of a service after Google Reader. It sucks to invest time and effort into something that was assumed to exist, however naively, forever. On the other hand, if we were to hold on to every design and implementation we've ever created without the ability to throw it away, no matter whom or what depends on it, our technological progress would probably be slowed.

Could you imagine if every piece of code you wrote once it was functioning, couldn't be thrown away and you had to support it forever once it existed? That would blow.

It's much like backwards compatibility decisions. Sometimes you gotta break free.

Just breathe, remember it's not the end of the world, and if you're on the self entitlement band wagon, you're going nowhere fast.




Well, that's one of the major sucky features of the cloud. It's out of your control.

If you want to use a typewriter you can. If you want to still use WordStar or WordPerfect you can (so long as you have hardware it'll run on).

> It's much like backwards compatibility decisions. Sometimes you gotta break free.

I agree that clinging onto backward compatibility feels like we've hurt progress. Especially since that compatibility was with x86.


What annoys me is it's become a bandwagon for karma. Half the people bitching at Google for shutting some service down probably never even used the service.

Companies kill unpopular or bad products. Google is not unique.


I think the correct sentiment: if you're relying on an advertising company like Google, you're going nowhere fast.


Relying on a eCommerce company like Amazon, you're going nowhere fast.

I too can make blanket ignorant statements. Google is not just an advertisement company anymore. Haven't been for awhile.


How can you possibly suggest that? For 2012 advertising revenues made up nearly 95% of Google's total revenue ($43.6B of $46B). http://investor.google.com/financial/tables.html




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