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Not really. GE may have stopped making a radio your parents bought in 1948, but it's perfectly possible it still works. How many perfectly functional devices h

Not really. GE may have stopped making a radio your parents bought in 1948, but it's perfectly possible it still works. How many perfectly functional devices have GE bricked simply because they were bored of supporting them? MS Windows drivers support just about every ancient crusty device MS ever made - apparently forever. It's the web obsession with having every trivial action go through an online server - for data gathering - that breaks the consumer's implied contract with hardware devices: That they should simply work until physically beyond economic repair. Most of those simple web API actions could function just as well on the LAN, so the device could function indefinitely - you'd just lose remote access when the Google API server shuttered. The 99% case of controlling lights or thermostat whilst in the home would still work, just no longer remotely from a hotel 1,000 miles away.

panarky 8y ago
I can think of some pretty big Microsoft pivots, and I don't begrudge them their choices at all. But it's curious that you only hear cries of outrage when Google kills products, not when other companies do it. Why do you think that is? ------ Media Center Kinect Zune PlaysForSure DRM Microsoft Money Windows Home Server Microsoft Kin Phone Microsoft Mobile, previously known as Nokia Windows 10 Mobile The Band TechNet Hotmail Live Messenger Live Mesh Groove Music Pass Groove Music for iOS Groove Music for Android Encarta Windows Small Business Server Flight Simulator Microsoft Works Microsoft FrontPage Windows Embedded Automotive, formerly Microsoft Auto, formerly Windows CE for Automotive, formerly Windows Automotive, formerly Windows Mobile for Automotive
- NeedMoreTea 8y ago
  I think that's because no one is suggesting that things shouldn't ever come to end of life. Ford stopped making the Model T. If you already bought them, Microsoft Money, Encarta, Flight Sim, SBS, Works etc etc should all keep working. If you still have the CD you can probably install just fine, and keep on using them (if it's still meaningful). I'm sure plenty do just that, and perhaps some will for decades. Just no more new versions are coming. Sure MSN Messenger and other online offerings have been hard stopped. For most of your list, no one hit what's effectively a remote kill switch, and stopped them working for everyone at the same moment. That's what killing an API does for an internet service, or hardware device dependent on that service. On such and such date $thing will cease working. Google does that all the time, hardware and software. So much that they got themselves a reputation for it. Didn't wear out, die of old age, become obsolete, but they reached out and killed. It's qualitatively different.

panarky 8y ago

I can think of some pretty big Microsoft pivots, and I don't begrudge them their choices at all. But it's curious that you only hear cries of outrage when Google kills products, not when other companies do it. Why do you think that is? ------ Media Center Kinect Zune PlaysForSure DRM Microsoft Money Windows Home Server Microsoft Kin Phone Microsoft Mobile, previously known as Nokia Windows 10 Mobile The Band TechNet Hotmail Live Messenger Live Mesh Groove Music Pass Groove Music for iOS Groove Music for Android Encarta Windows Small Business Server Flight Simulator Microsoft Works Microsoft FrontPage Windows Embedded Automotive, formerly Microsoft Auto, formerly Windows CE for Automotive, formerly Windows Automotive, formerly Windows Mobile for Automotive

NeedMoreTea 8y ago
I think that's because no one is suggesting that things shouldn't ever come to end of life. Ford stopped making the Model T. If you already bought them, Microsoft Money, Encarta, Flight Sim, SBS, Works etc etc should all keep working. If you still have the CD you can probably install just fine, and keep on using them (if it's still meaningful). I'm sure plenty do just that, and perhaps some will for decades. Just no more new versions are coming. Sure MSN Messenger and other online offerings have been hard stopped. For most of your list, no one hit what's effectively a remote kill switch, and stopped them working for everyone at the same moment. That's what killing an API does for an internet service, or hardware device dependent on that service. On such and such date $thing will cease working. Google does that all the time, hardware and software. So much that they got themselves a reputation for it. Didn't wear out, die of old age, become obsolete, but they reached out and killed. It's qualitatively different.