I don't quite get what people expect... do they think that once google creates something, they are obligated to continue it indefinitely? That seems like an unreasonable expectation.
Edit: I want to add that this is a really easy problem to solve. Support or create an open standard for the communication between the device and the server. Allow the device to be reconfigured to communicate with other servers. Then you can shut down your service and owners can keep on going. Better yet, make it so that our device can communicate on the LAN without needing a server at all. These problems exist not because they’re some inevitable fact of life, but because these companies see more value in not fixing them.
If you as a user or third party provider integrated with this API and rely on it for functionality, you have no alternative nor recourse.
> As a Works with Nest developer and partner, you will not be able to access or control Nest devices once the Works with Nest APIs are turned off on August 31, 2019. Moving forward, our team will focus on making Works with Google Assistant the most helpful and intelligent ecosystem for the home, enabling all of the products in your users’ homes to work together. We encourage all smart home developers to visit the Actions on Google Smart Home developer site to learn how to integrate your devices or services with the Google Assistant.
Beyond this, apps can be updated to remove or decrease support for older devices, and here our focus on trying to insist on auto-updated apps to fix security problems, or on apps that are designed to receive server-side updates, causes significant problems.
At some point, for example, I'm going to have to stop using the Philips Hue app, because I have an older Hue bridge. Support for the older bridge was at some point removed from the main app (and accompanied by an advertisement for the newer bridge), and moved to a legacy one, which seems to have a significantly slower response time. Now the legacy app has popups noting that web services will no longer support older hubs, and other services will be degraded... along with advertisements for the newer hubs. I expect at some point the app will simply be intentionally broken, entirely.
Fortunately, in this case, I can just use other apps, and other systems entirely, if need be, and at least the older hardware supports entirely local APIs (unless Philips decides to push a firmware update to break them?). I'm certainly not going to replace hardware that works with new hardware that provides no benefits, and throw away the old hardware; this would make no sense.
We call it the tech industry but 90% of it is actually politics. Big money influences things the most but everyone basically looks out for their own interest, right down to programmers shilling their favourite language/framework. Thats what makes this a difficult problem.
Google, though, is unusual that most of their users are not Google customers. They are the product. So Google's relationship to most individuals is statistical, not personal. If they care about me as an individual, I have never seen the slightest sign of it.
I also think that a lot of things at Google get started and killed not on the business merits, but due to shifting internal politics. Most of my Google friends have left, so I don't have recent examples, but from what I hear Google Plus is a fine example of something launched because a powerful executive got excited. As the political winds shifted, though, it got neglected, and then eventually killed.
Another interesting example for me is Google Reader. I liked the product, but was never clear to me why they built it. They ignored it for a long time and then shot it in the head. Giving it away crushed the market for commercial RSS readers. Once they stopped, that market came back, proving that Google could have had a successful commercial product if they had bothered to run it like a real business.
So no, I don't think we expect them to continue all things indefinitely. But I would love to see a more clear logic for what they will continue to support, because from my perspective it's erratic. I would be very unlikely to build a company that depended on Google; despite having used them for 20 years, I still don't think I can predict their business strategy. In contrast, I've been using Amazon for a similar period, and I have a pretty good idea of what they'll do. I'm not worried they'll EOL the AWS services I use, for example.
Let's ban Google from working on life-saving medical devices, because they will just get bored and stop supporting the software.
So what? That's between the car buyers and Google. Why should they be disallowed?
US Federal Trade Commission, https://www.ftc.gov/system/files/documents/public_statements... (1983)
> The basic question is whether the act or practice is likely to affect the consumer's conduct or decision with regard to a product or service. If so, the practice is material ... because consumers are likely to have chosen differently but for the deception ... the Commission will find deception if there is a representation, omission or practice that is likely to mislead the consumer acting reasonably in the circumstances, to the consumer's detriment.
I don't know if anyone at TJ Maxx even understands that these are not items they can sell, as they don't work anymore. I think they think they're just fancy watches.
They will get a fraction returned. So, they still profit.
Big companies like that need fines big enough to risk closing them down for doing stuff like this. No reason for them to care otherwise.
They either know, or have purposefully arranged things so the people who know enough aren't burdened with knowing everything. Neither is acceptable.
They could be idiots who don't know what they're doing, but then they wouldn't still be in business.
I returned cheap electronics to a UK store recently, it was very clear the entire batch didn't work, indeed it was probably why they were on offer. People will say "oh it was only a couple of quid, won't bother taking it back". Still on sale. I wouldn't be surprised if they hadn't reshelved the non-working ones I returned.
Safety-critical() physical infrastructure is different than internet services. Applying laws for one to the other makes no sense.
() remember when all the Nests’ batteries died at the same time one winter?
Consider it an incentive to avoid dependencies on external services.
Perhaps there's a legislative solution. Although in the UK the Consumer Rights Act has no time-limit, so in theory of your thermostat stops working because the company decided to pull the plug then you can get refunded, at least.
I'd like to see something like a requirement to publish interoperability details, or code that runs on a major OS that operates as a server, to facilitate long term user-led support, too.
The requirement to publish interoperabilty-details/code/etc. is something I see as far more burdensome, perhaps in some cases to the point of being impractical, which is sad because I actually value these properties quite highly. I don't own any products that rely on the API of a specific company to continue functioning, and as an individual consumer I reward companies that do release such details (albeit in a statistically insignificant way). The simple, obvious reason that this is burdensome is because the release of code helps competitors, and requiring a company to help competitors makes it more likely that they will decide to invest in some less-regulated industry instead. There's a logical reason that most software companies aren't open-sourcing their products, unfortunately. Also, and I disagree with this yet don't want to force my opinions of the world on other peoples' infosec decisions, some people argue that closed source software is more secure than open source software due to security through obscurity. More rarely, I can imagine edge-case IoT devices that rely on highly specific infrastructure where interoperability just isn't reasonable, and the question of which layer interoperability should be provided on is non-obvious. Imagine if SpaceX launched a swarm of satellites measuring some data about the Martian atmosphere and released a product that could tell you the measurements when asked. Do they need to provide the details of the API between the product and the Earth-based relay? Do they need to provide the details of the connection between the Earth-based relay and the Martian satellite swarm? Do they need to provide the details of the internals of the satellites themselves? What if they're the only company anywhere near being able to supply this service, and the technology will almost certainly be obsolete by the time another company manages to launch a Martian satellite swarm? I feel like this probably isn't the best example, but there might be better examples I'm too dumb to think of at the moment, and not at least considering those known-unknown potential scenarios might be harmful to society as a whole (but I think I've articulated this last point worse than the rest of my comment, and I'm not entirely convinced of it myself).
[0]Edit: on further thought, this hampering effect should only really exist if there is a minimum time from date-of-sale that the minimum EOL must extend to; if I can meet the requirements while selling a product that is only guaranteed to work until yesterday then it shouldn't have any real effect other than consumer awareness, but it also kind of takes the teeth out of the proposal.
There are also some products in there that were killed in a fashion that seemed capricious and difficult-to-explain in terms of popularity, usage and continued cost to Google - notably Reader and Code Search.
To that end, I'm not sure I see the value in framing this specifically as a Google thing. Google is maybe the most visible because of how many products it has, and how popular many of them are. But really, this sort of thing is a problem that's inherent to any IoT devices that rely on proprietary cloud services, in whole or in part.
These services typically include some language in the EULA to the effect of, "We can disable parts of this device from our end, for any reason, at any time." And agreeing to those is almost certainly precondition for using the device.
Which absolutely sucks. But it's the legal and consumer protection environment we live in right now. Pretending it isn't is -- hang the downvotes, I'm gonna double down on this -- pollyannaish. Until things change, your only real recourse as a consumer is to refuse to buy products that are sold under those sorts of terms. Which, unfortunately, does mean steering clear of IoT devices that rely on proprietary cloud services.