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Actually, they have explicit guarantees, yes. As an outsider, you would know from the terms of service: https://cloud.google.com/terms/ https://cloud.google.co

Actually, they have explicit guarantees, yes. As an outsider, you would know from the terms of service: https://cloud.google.com/terms/ https://cloud.google.com/terms/ 7.2 Deprecation Policy. Google will announce if it intends to discontinue or make backwards incompatible changes to the Services specified at the URL in the next sentence. Google will use commercially reasonable efforts to continue to operate those Services versions and features identified at https://cloud.google.com/terms/deprecation https://cloud.google.com/terms/deprecation without these changes for at least one year after that announcement, unless (as Google determines in its reasonable good faith judgment): (i) required by law or third party relationship (including if there is a change in applicable law or relationship), or (ii) doing so could create a security risk or substantial economic or material technical burden. The above policy is the "Deprecation Policy." If you click through to https://cloud.google.com/terms/deprecation https://cloud.google.com/terms/deprecation you will see the covered services. (Reasonable good faith is a legal term of art, so no, Google would not get away with whatever silly edge case people come up with)

mjw1007 8y ago
Summarising: they have no guarantee against closure; Google promises to give one year's notice if/when they decide to close them.
- jbg_ 8y ago
  ... unless they decide that giving one year of notice would be too expensive or hard.
  - DannyBee 8y ago
    As mentioned, no, the legal standard is not that simple
    - jbg_ 8y ago
      Many of the products Google has already shut down would easily have passed a reasonable good faith judgement that they were too expensive to keep running. I don't see how this would be any different. I know that "reasonable good faith" is a legal term of art, and I'm saying that I don't think Google would struggle to meet that standard if they needed to shut one of these services down.
      - tptacek 8y ago
        Those products Google shut down didn't have terms of services requiring Google to keep them up. You've ignored half the argument here.
      - DannyBee 8y ago
        "Many of the products Google has already shut down would easily have passed a reasonable good faith judgement that they were too expensive to keep running." That isn't the standard listed. It's "substantial economic burden". None of those services were a substantial economic burden for a many-billion dollar company, so sorry, but i completely disagree.
  - nolemurs 8y ago
    This is the best guarantee any company ever gives. For smaller companies if something becomes too expensive or hard, they just go out of business. For larger companies, they have to draw the line somewhere. You won't get stronger guarantees from anyone, that would be insane. Google definitely has a history of turning down free services when they're proving unprofitable, but that's only free services. There's no history of Google turning down paid services without good notice that I know of.
- DannyBee 8y ago
  Remember also this is the guarantee made to all users. I expect larger users get a lot more than that.

mjw1007 8y ago

Summarising: they have no guarantee against closure; Google promises to give one year's notice if/when they decide to close them.

jbg_ 8y ago
... unless they decide that giving one year of notice would be too expensive or hard.
- DannyBee 8y ago
  As mentioned, no, the legal standard is not that simple
  - jbg_ 8y ago
    Many of the products Google has already shut down would easily have passed a reasonable good faith judgement that they were too expensive to keep running. I don't see how this would be any different. I know that "reasonable good faith" is a legal term of art, and I'm saying that I don't think Google would struggle to meet that standard if they needed to shut one of these services down.
    - tptacek 8y ago
      Those products Google shut down didn't have terms of services requiring Google to keep them up. You've ignored half the argument here.
    - DannyBee 8y ago
      "Many of the products Google has already shut down would easily have passed a reasonable good faith judgement that they were too expensive to keep running." That isn't the standard listed. It's "substantial economic burden". None of those services were a substantial economic burden for a many-billion dollar company, so sorry, but i completely disagree.
- nolemurs 8y ago
  This is the best guarantee any company ever gives. For smaller companies if something becomes too expensive or hard, they just go out of business. For larger companies, they have to draw the line somewhere. You won't get stronger guarantees from anyone, that would be insane. Google definitely has a history of turning down free services when they're proving unprofitable, but that's only free services. There's no history of Google turning down paid services without good notice that I know of.
DannyBee 8y ago
Remember also this is the guarantee made to all users. I expect larger users get a lot more than that.