Is it bad? Yes. Does this happen? Also yes. Maybe you're assuming that there isn't software which gets written and installed but only touched sporadically. Web

Is it bad? Yes. Does this happen? Also yes. Maybe you're assuming that there isn't software which gets written and installed but only touched sporadically. Web services will be integrated in some web site and forgotten about. Sometime after the service is shut down some user of the site might notice. It's not the case that all users of a web API are developers like the HN crowd and in the loop of things. To be clear, I'm not saying people should expect different support times, just that one shouldn't rely on a third party when it's all over the network and you have no local copy of the code to potentially operate for longer than officially supported.