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Comment by bitmapbrother | Hacker News Reader

Just curious, do you post the same response when Microsoft announces products or services?

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Category:Discontinued_Microsof...

You can also add these to the list:

  Wunderlist
  Sunset
  Games for Windows
  Silverlight
  Zune
  Kin
  XNA
  PlaysForSure
  Flight Sim
  Expression Suite
  SteadyState
  Windows RT
  Windows Phone 7
  Forefront
  Front Page
  Money

Or Apple?

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_products_discontinued_....

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Some of the Microsoft products you listed have been around and successful for a really long time. I can only imagine some people being disappointed about Flight Simulator being dropped after about 24 years, but that's a very respectable product lifespan. When you look at Silverlight, that was very strategic to Microsoft, they put a lot of weight behind it, and them abandoning it after nine years isn't for a lack of trying. With Google it's more like floating an idea, that then people might get hooked on, for them to seemingly say: nah, never mind. Google probably has the numbers to back up these decisions, but for people that were buying into it, that's pretty sour, and it either has happened quite a few times with them, or they have a major perception problem around the matter.

Yes, some of those products and services that Microsoft has shut down do go back some way, but others such as Sunset and, the soon to be shut down, Wunderlist are very recent.

The difference between web services that Google provides and almost everything in both those lists is:

1) When a web service goes away, you can't keep using the old version that's installed on your PC/hardware you own.

2) In the vast majority of cases the products were not cancelled before the introduction of a replacement. Notable exceptions might include the Newton. And yes, it would probably quite normal to mention the Newton when a similar product was launched (i.e. the original iPhone) and may people did.

Microsoft has also cancelled services so I'm not sure why you're trying to make it sound any different. I have Steam games that have no online support anymore because Microsoft cancelled yet another Steam competitor service. I've lost track of how many times they've tried to take on Steam and lost. You would think they would have learned by now.

But neither of those companies have as thoroughly destroyed a standard as Google did with RSS. Apple in particular has almost always continued with a device to fill the hole left by a product(excluding the Newton).

RSS is still alive and well so I'm not sure where you get the idea that Google destroyed it by cancelling Google Reader.

>Apple in particular has almost always continued with a device to fill the hole left by a product(excluding the Newton).

And it was replaced with a significantly higher priced device.

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