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We are not missing the point. Some of us just happen to value other things more than convenience. There's no shortage of discontinued products that were cancel

We are not missing the point. Some of us just happen to value other things more than convenience. There's no shortage of discontinued products that were cancelled even though a lot of effort and money was poured into them. Amount previously invested is a sunk cost and shouldn't even matter when deciding if continue a service/product or not. Just because you have already dig a hole doesn't mean you should keep digging even though you can't profit from it.

primitivesuave 10y ago
This is a good point. However, products are usually discontinued because they no longer fit in with the core business of the acquirer. In this case, Google is making a clear statement that Firebase will be an integral part of the Google Cloud experience for everyone (hobbyists all the way to apps at scale).
iofj 10y ago
> sunk cost and shouldn't even matter Shouldn't but does. It has it's own fallacy section: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sunk_costs#Loss_aversion_and_the_sunk_cost_fallacy https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sunk_costs#Loss_aversion_and_t... Also, not falling for the fallacy means admitting defeat. And the higher up one is in an organization, the worse admitting defeat is for your career. Having a product dead-ended by keeping on working on it forever is much better for manager/government official careers. So sadly, the fact that other people (above you) fall for the fallacy makes falling for it yourself rational in a lot of cases. Instead just systematically lower the priority, but never to zero. In anything but a startup, I would treat any sunk cost above a minimal level as a firm commitment to continue at any cost. I would never have done so 5 years ago, but ...