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, Micros

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.