Wow.
This is one of the major problems in the economy of app/service buying and selling.
What you bank upon today could be bought up and shut down tomorrow by anyone with big enough bank.
It's not the first time we're seeing such a thing happen. It happened with Posterous, when twitter bought it. It happened with tweetdeck app that was acquired by twitter. It happened with google reader.
Twitter very idiotically introduced token limits for app developers which effectively nipped many good apps in the bud. They might be there right now but they're not popular.
Remember the twitter app Carbon? Or Gravity? Hell, twitter bought the tweetie app which is the basic for the present twitter app, which, right now, is a frankestenian monster of wishes, whims and desires of the powers that be in twitter headquarters.
Google is famous for killing off apps or services that don't get much use. Which is pretty okay. At least they're doing everything in house and no one else gets to suffer the brunt of their actions.
Except the sparrow mail app, if I remember correctly Google bought it, killed the app development and integrated the team into Inbox development team.
But hey, what can you do? It's the Internet age man, services come and go, live and die, get bought up and shut down, circle of life and all that jazz.
Right?
_Wrong!_
It really shits the bed for the users who took coupons and waited in virtual lines to be let in to a certain app's domain so they can in some cases even pay up and be a user. People have built their workflows around apps and services and then the parent company just decides to shut them down. Cuz hey, fuck the users! They'll forget in a year or two.
No man. Fuck that. I remember Posterous. It was fucking great. It was fucking revolutionary and Twitter brutally took it behind the shed and put a bullet in its brain and slit it's throat for good measure too. Fuck. That. Shit.
I used mailbox for a while. And used carousel too. Both apps are fucking great but they didn't work for me because neither do I click too many pics nor do I get too many emails. But there are many others who do. People have put their money and effort and time and emotions in these apps.
The only silver lining here might be that when carousel finally shuts down, the data will still be safe in Dropbox. But a neat, fun app will bite the dust. But mailbox was a powerhouse of an app. The only alternatives to mailbox that I see right now is the Outlook app. But it still leaves tons of users in shitty waters.
And it makes me wonder what will go next? Will blogger be the next service to bite the bullet? Or tumblr? Or Flickr? Who the fuck knows. Who the fuck ever knows.
We live in interesting times, man. Interesting times.
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