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"Why? As a team, we’re very proud of the product we built, now used by over 125k developers, data scientists and businesses" ... from FAQ: "service will shut d

"Why? As a team, we’re very proud of the product we built, now used by over 125k developers, data scientists and businesses" ... from FAQ: "service will shut down Feb 29, 2016" In fact, they are so proud, they're giving all but ~2 weeks notice to said 125K developers, data scientists, and businesses to migrate off the platform? That is an abysmally small amount of time and if I was a paying customer, i'd be furious. On the other hand, congrats to Kimono team!

spesad 11y ago
ParseHub is much better at getting websites from shitty, complicated sites. Kimono was great for something simple, but I found ParseHub to be a more powerful and flexible web scraper.
asdfologist 11y ago
Well, if you want the real answer: Why? Money.
code4tee 11y ago
Sort of plays right into the whole argument being made over on another thread (https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=11105198 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=11105198) that companies shouldn't rely too heavily on proprietary tools to solve their data challenges. Palantir is the poster child for black box software company that keeps trying to sell you more expensive licenses for their mystery algorithm. I know they've had some success in the government sector but I've seen them make a real mess of things in the private sector. At my last company their system just became a giant paracite where data went in and stuff came out the other end but it was entirely unclear what happened in between. The more we looked into the mystery middle ground the uglier it got.
- dkarapetyan 11y ago
  There is no mystery algorithm. It's just cheap college labor working obscene hours to pump out "data analysis" scripts. The sad thing is that it actually works. The places that hire palantir are so mired in bureaucracy and process that whatever palantir builds seems to be better. Of course, just like SAP and Accenture you're now kinda locked in with support contracts. Modern tools like spark and mesos in theory let you do what palantir does and then some but it assumes your internal IT team is semi-competent which more often than not is not a correct assumption.
  - irremediable 11y ago
    Is it cheap college labour? They pay pretty well.
    - dkarapetyan 11y ago
      For interns maybe. But average salary across the board is not high at all.
      - irremediable 11y ago
        Maybe it tops out early, but I'm given to understand junior salaries are also very competitive. (Maybe this is less true by comparison in the States -- it's fairly true here in the UK.)
    - ves 11y ago
      I thought they pay in the 100-110k range for new grads, which is not great by any standard (given how 'selective' they are)
pccampbell 11y ago
Kind of bummed on the two weeks notice, but I'm sure there's some pressure and tradeoff the team had to make, which I guess softens the blow a bit (for me at least).
frabcus 11y ago
"Used by" smells of being a vanity metric - probably signed up users, rather than monthly active. My guess, they weren't commercially successful, and aquihire was the best way out.
- jrs235 11y ago
  Yup. I signed up with an account to play with it once. Never used it after the initial week. I wonder how many others of that 125k were just drive by test drives.
kftaylor 11y ago
They never even tried to charge me money. I would have paid ... happily
- robertp 11y ago
  me too
  - LS1894 11y ago
    me three... I even offered
- deleted 11y ago
  [deleted]
VeilEm 11y ago
> we couldn’t be happier to announce The tone of the announcement is in bad taste given the bad news for their customers.
- asg 11y ago
  This is really bad news for us, and the tone of the announcement grated. Two weeks notice is very bad form, I'm having to come back from vacation to fix this. When we evaluated options a year ago, kimono was the best fit. We'd happily have paid, and did ask. I don't understand what happened... Did they run out of funding?
  - scrapehero 11y ago
    Here is a statement that can give you some insight "Kimono Labs explained that in the two years since launching, it wasn’t able to have the impact that it wanted, and that the acquisition by Palantir will give the team “unmatched support, resources, and the ability to work on things we could not tackle alone as a small startup.”" from http://venturebeat.com/2016/02/15/palantir-acquires-kimono-labs-will-shutter-data-collection-service-on-february-29/ http://venturebeat.com/2016/02/15/palantir-acquires-kimono-l...
deleted 11y ago
[deleted]
LS1894 11y ago
The desktop download softens the blow somewhat... ...except it's not possible to run APIs on schedule - which is exactly what I used it for. Gutted.
vrathee 11y ago
You guys need replacement? We will be launching the web version of Data Scraping Studio on same day(Feb, 29 2015) http://www.datascraping.co http://www.datascraping.co
henrik1409 11y ago
Dear Kimono Users We at CloudScrape.com are happy to welcome you onboard our platform - you get 20 hours of scraping runtime for free and the ability to navigate much more complex websites, opening up tons more opportunities then you've had previously. And we're here to stay :) Kind regards, Henrik Hofmeister, CTO, Co-Founder @ CloudScrape.com http://cloudscrape.com http://cloudscrape.com
subratbasnet 11y ago
We've had enterprises that depended on Kimono come to us; which isn't surprising anymore :) Hope others will give Grepsr a try as well! - https://www.grepsr.com/ https://www.grepsr.com/
rangeva 11y ago
Calling all (almost) Kimono Labs developers to migrate to Webhose.io http://blog.webhose.io/2016/02/16/calling-all-almost-kimono-labs-developers-to-migrate-to-webhose-io/ http://blog.webhose.io/2016/02/16/calling-all-almost-kimono-...
scrapehero 11y ago
If you have been burned by free services like this shutting down, give https://scrapehero.com https://scrapehero.com a try - we love our customers and they love us back. We dont plan to abandon them with a 2 week notice.
- scrapehero 11y ago
  Here are some of our thoughts https://learn.scrapehero.com/demise-of-kimono-labs-and-the-fate-of-their-users/ https://learn.scrapehero.com/demise-of-kimono-labs-and-the-f...

spesad 11y ago

ParseHub is much better at getting websites from shitty, complicated sites. Kimono was great for something simple, but I found ParseHub to be a more powerful and flexible web scraper.

asdfologist 11y ago

Well, if you want the real answer: Why? Money.

code4tee 11y ago

Sort of plays right into the whole argument being made over on another thread (https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=11105198 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=11105198) that companies shouldn't rely too heavily on proprietary tools to solve their data challenges. Palantir is the poster child for black box software company that keeps trying to sell you more expensive licenses for their mystery algorithm. I know they've had some success in the government sector but I've seen them make a real mess of things in the private sector. At my last company their system just became a giant paracite where data went in and stuff came out the other end but it was entirely unclear what happened in between. The more we looked into the mystery middle ground the uglier it got.

dkarapetyan 11y ago
There is no mystery algorithm. It's just cheap college labor working obscene hours to pump out "data analysis" scripts. The sad thing is that it actually works. The places that hire palantir are so mired in bureaucracy and process that whatever palantir builds seems to be better. Of course, just like SAP and Accenture you're now kinda locked in with support contracts. Modern tools like spark and mesos in theory let you do what palantir does and then some but it assumes your internal IT team is semi-competent which more often than not is not a correct assumption.
- irremediable 11y ago
  Is it cheap college labour? They pay pretty well.
  - dkarapetyan 11y ago
    For interns maybe. But average salary across the board is not high at all.
    - irremediable 11y ago
      Maybe it tops out early, but I'm given to understand junior salaries are also very competitive. (Maybe this is less true by comparison in the States -- it's fairly true here in the UK.)
  - ves 11y ago
    I thought they pay in the 100-110k range for new grads, which is not great by any standard (given how 'selective' they are)

pccampbell 11y ago

Kind of bummed on the two weeks notice, but I'm sure there's some pressure and tradeoff the team had to make, which I guess softens the blow a bit (for me at least).

frabcus 11y ago

"Used by" smells of being a vanity metric - probably signed up users, rather than monthly active. My guess, they weren't commercially successful, and aquihire was the best way out.

jrs235 11y ago
Yup. I signed up with an account to play with it once. Never used it after the initial week. I wonder how many others of that 125k were just drive by test drives.

kftaylor 11y ago

They never even tried to charge me money. I would have paid ... happily

robertp 11y ago
me too
- LS1894 11y ago
  me three... I even offered
deleted 11y ago
[deleted]

VeilEm 11y ago

> we couldn’t be happier to announce The tone of the announcement is in bad taste given the bad news for their customers.

asg 11y ago
This is really bad news for us, and the tone of the announcement grated. Two weeks notice is very bad form, I'm having to come back from vacation to fix this. When we evaluated options a year ago, kimono was the best fit. We'd happily have paid, and did ask. I don't understand what happened... Did they run out of funding?
- scrapehero 11y ago
  Here is a statement that can give you some insight "Kimono Labs explained that in the two years since launching, it wasn’t able to have the impact that it wanted, and that the acquisition by Palantir will give the team “unmatched support, resources, and the ability to work on things we could not tackle alone as a small startup.”" from http://venturebeat.com/2016/02/15/palantir-acquires-kimono-labs-will-shutter-data-collection-service-on-february-29/ http://venturebeat.com/2016/02/15/palantir-acquires-kimono-l...

deleted 11y ago

[deleted]

LS1894 11y ago

The desktop download softens the blow somewhat... ...except it's not possible to run APIs on schedule - which is exactly what I used it for. Gutted.

vrathee 11y ago

You guys need replacement? We will be launching the web version of Data Scraping Studio on same day(Feb, 29 2015) http://www.datascraping.co http://www.datascraping.co

henrik1409 11y ago

Dear Kimono Users We at CloudScrape.com are happy to welcome you onboard our platform - you get 20 hours of scraping runtime for free and the ability to navigate much more complex websites, opening up tons more opportunities then you've had previously. And we're here to stay :) Kind regards, Henrik Hofmeister, CTO, Co-Founder @ CloudScrape.com http://cloudscrape.com http://cloudscrape.com

subratbasnet 11y ago

We've had enterprises that depended on Kimono come to us; which isn't surprising anymore :) Hope others will give Grepsr a try as well! - https://www.grepsr.com/ https://www.grepsr.com/

rangeva 11y ago

Calling all (almost) Kimono Labs developers to migrate to Webhose.io http://blog.webhose.io/2016/02/16/calling-all-almost-kimono-labs-developers-to-migrate-to-webhose-io/ http://blog.webhose.io/2016/02/16/calling-all-almost-kimono-...

scrapehero 11y ago

If you have been burned by free services like this shutting down, give https://scrapehero.com https://scrapehero.com a try - we love our customers and they love us back. We dont plan to abandon them with a 2 week notice.

scrapehero 11y ago
Here are some of our thoughts https://learn.scrapehero.com/demise-of-kimono-labs-and-the-fate-of-their-users/ https://learn.scrapehero.com/demise-of-kimono-labs-and-the-f...