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Comment by raganwald | Hacker News Reader

My (irrational) fear is that if this becomes a modest success, there will be an aqui-hiring with much talk of it appearing in some upcoming edition of Blackberry or Windows or whatever, and then nothing will be heard from them again.

I think I need a little more sunshine, I must be low on Vitamin D.

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Once something like this becomes somewhat popular, even if it's killed by acquisition, there will be clones popping up everywhere. I have Swype on my N9 (once considered state-of-the art input innovation) and I remember anticipating it being on every smartphone. That didn't happen, but now you can find dozens of clones in the Android market.

That's how technology moves. Ground-breaking technology becomes a commodity, often laying the foundation for bigger innovations to take place.

"...but now you can find dozens of clones in the Android market."

Android 4.2.2 comes with a swipe keyboard by default. I have it on my Nexus 7--I don't use it all the time, but it's useful when I am tired or I want to type longer sentences.

I really enjoyed Swype early on, but I never figured out what their plan for it was - it seemed to be in perpetual beta, when I'd have happily been paying for it as an app. The weird installer shenanigans and insistence on internet access finally killed it for me, well before them getting acquired.

It's sad in a way - I also thought it'd be on every phone, but it looks now like that's more likely to happen via the same functionality being built into other keyboards rather than Swype doing it themselves.

Unless there are patents involved.

I seem to remember some one-handed keyboard projects (hardware and software) were killed because of patent encumbrance.

(http://blog.monstuff.com/archives/000021.html)

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