5 ms·

What happened to Quicken Online, post-acquisition of Mint

44 points by Cmccann7 16y ago

k33n 16y ago
Every time I read an article written by Michael Arrington, there is a 3rd grade-level spelling error in it. > Otherwise you’ve just waisted all that time your users put into the product. It seriously drives me nuts.
rfreytag 16y ago
This is the fundamental risk of building your life or business even in part on SaaS. People can and do still use ancient client-side software for their own reasons; much to MS' and other's frustration. With SaaS you are trusting the operators of your key service to respect their users. No surprise that some users are disappointed. SaaS works but I think it works best as a cooperative rather than an corporation with interests separate from that of it's users.
pragmatic 16y ago
Stories like these deter people from trusting the "cloud." I use QuickBooks for my Biz and no way would I do it online (especially after this). It's just too important to trust to some cheeseball marketing exec.
- pragmatic 16y ago
  I should say, I don't trust unpaid services. There are a few major ones like Amazon that I trust and use, but there is a definite risk to using online sources. Whereas I can use a really old version of Microsoft Money, I can't use an old version of an online service.
- tomjen3 16y ago
  So you are assuming that they are not going to do something like that to Quickbooks? They are not going to drastically increase the price, and then hold you ransom for all your financial history, knowing that you have to upgrade to be able to work with your accountant but he can't read your old files? Just saying - desktop software isn't any safer unless you have an open migration path available.
borisk 16y ago
This sounds like a great opportunity for Mint clones. Implement automatic import from Quicken and get quite a few customers.
- gacba 16y ago
  Beat me to the comment. I was thinking the same thing.
- maukdaddy 16y ago
  This makes me wonder how fragile parts of Mint's technology are. They couldn't find some way to transfer the data from Quicken? Also, Mint's new Goals feature requires you to have separate accounts. You can't have two goals, save for car and house, both using the same account. Both of these reek of a technology base that is fragile.
  - oasisbob 16y ago
    I can't speak to how fragile Mint's technology is internally -- although I think the duplicate transactions showing up in my account for weeks speaks to that -- but it's worth pointing out that acquiring the transactions for a consumer is fragile and fraught with peril. Mint uses a 3rd party called Yodlee for their transactional feeds. Some (most?) of the time, Yodlee acquires their transactions using screen-scraping of Home Banking websites. In theory, OFX could be used as well -- but -- there is no good way to auto-discover a FIs OFX feed via a well-known URI, or otherwise. Quicken uses a proprietary db to link a request for a FI to a URL. This is their secret sauce. I died a little inside when Mint is was purchased by Intuit. By leveraging their Quicken users, Intuit forces banks to purchase a branding identifier (BID), otherwise Quicken won't download or parse OFX transactions. There is no good technical reason for this. It's a classic embrace and extend: Create format (OFX) with industry players. Modify format (QFX) and leverage existing marketshare to force adoption. Make money at both ends. So, yes, one could probably get the data from Quicken. But it makes very little sense to invest time in such a squirrelly method that /still/ depends on Intuit. (Remember the Palm/iTunes fiasco?)
deleted 16y ago
[deleted]
- jgrahamc 16y ago
  If almost any of quicken's competitors had gotten their software into stores, the world would be much better for small businesses who would have had a decent option to buy. You seem to have forgotten Microsoft Money which has been available since Windows 3.0.
  - oasisbob 16y ago
    Microsoft Money /had/ been available, not /has/. It was discontinued several years ago.
jared314 16y ago
I wonder if legacy saas products could switch to a user owned/funded model.

44 points by Cmccann7 16y ago

k33n 16y ago

Every time I read an article written by Michael Arrington, there is a 3rd grade-level spelling error in it. > Otherwise you’ve just waisted all that time your users put into the product. It seriously drives me nuts.

rfreytag 16y ago

This is the fundamental risk of building your life or business even in part on SaaS. People can and do still use ancient client-side software for their own reasons; much to MS' and other's frustration. With SaaS you are trusting the operators of your key service to respect their users. No surprise that some users are disappointed. SaaS works but I think it works best as a cooperative rather than an corporation with interests separate from that of it's users.

pragmatic 16y ago

Stories like these deter people from trusting the "cloud." I use QuickBooks for my Biz and no way would I do it online (especially after this). It's just too important to trust to some cheeseball marketing exec.

pragmatic 16y ago
I should say, I don't trust unpaid services. There are a few major ones like Amazon that I trust and use, but there is a definite risk to using online sources. Whereas I can use a really old version of Microsoft Money, I can't use an old version of an online service.
tomjen3 16y ago
So you are assuming that they are not going to do something like that to Quickbooks? They are not going to drastically increase the price, and then hold you ransom for all your financial history, knowing that you have to upgrade to be able to work with your accountant but he can't read your old files? Just saying - desktop software isn't any safer unless you have an open migration path available.

borisk 16y ago

This sounds like a great opportunity for Mint clones. Implement automatic import from Quicken and get quite a few customers.

gacba 16y ago
Beat me to the comment. I was thinking the same thing.
maukdaddy 16y ago
This makes me wonder how fragile parts of Mint's technology are. They couldn't find some way to transfer the data from Quicken? Also, Mint's new Goals feature requires you to have separate accounts. You can't have two goals, save for car and house, both using the same account. Both of these reek of a technology base that is fragile.
- oasisbob 16y ago
  I can't speak to how fragile Mint's technology is internally -- although I think the duplicate transactions showing up in my account for weeks speaks to that -- but it's worth pointing out that acquiring the transactions for a consumer is fragile and fraught with peril. Mint uses a 3rd party called Yodlee for their transactional feeds. Some (most?) of the time, Yodlee acquires their transactions using screen-scraping of Home Banking websites. In theory, OFX could be used as well -- but -- there is no good way to auto-discover a FIs OFX feed via a well-known URI, or otherwise. Quicken uses a proprietary db to link a request for a FI to a URL. This is their secret sauce. I died a little inside when Mint is was purchased by Intuit. By leveraging their Quicken users, Intuit forces banks to purchase a branding identifier (BID), otherwise Quicken won't download or parse OFX transactions. There is no good technical reason for this. It's a classic embrace and extend: Create format (OFX) with industry players. Modify format (QFX) and leverage existing marketshare to force adoption. Make money at both ends. So, yes, one could probably get the data from Quicken. But it makes very little sense to invest time in such a squirrelly method that /still/ depends on Intuit. (Remember the Palm/iTunes fiasco?)

deleted 16y ago

[deleted]

jgrahamc 16y ago
If almost any of quicken's competitors had gotten their software into stores, the world would be much better for small businesses who would have had a decent option to buy. You seem to have forgotten Microsoft Money which has been available since Windows 3.0.
- oasisbob 16y ago
  Microsoft Money /had/ been available, not /has/. It was discontinued several years ago.

jared314 16y ago

I wonder if legacy saas products could switch to a user owned/funded model.