And how long after I take the time to import all of my loyalty cards into this system before Google decides to go a different direction and shuts this down?
Sigh...
Sigh...
I think GP is rather trying to make an assessment based off Google's history of closing down services. Similar to I rather trust a stranger than a known con-artist, while realizing the possibility that either could walk away with your money.
Yes but it also natural for human beings to follow: "Fool me once, shame on you; fool me twice, shame on me."
Most startups die and most products fail, eventually. It's not some sort of habitual bad behavior that companies selectively choose to participate in. So judging Google as a repeat (and thus untrustworthy) offender is unfair, and unrealistic, too, because you're just as likely to get burned elsewhere.
I don't know maybe I am an exception but I see companies shutting down products far from the norm. I normally tend to trust bigger companies with stability and invest most of my energy in them. I still have my hotmail/yahoo/aol accounts from the mid 90s working just fine.
Google is an exception. It feels like they are punching themselves when walking forward. Their current goal is to provide a comfortable integrated experience. Even though from a business perspective, it makes sense to shut down unviable products and services, from a consumer point of view it only causes frustration and loss of trust, which ironically is quiet opposite of what they are trying to achieve.
Ask yourself:
Keeping all other variables constant, which would you trust to be around longer:
Google Drive or Dropbox?
Google App Engine or AWS?
Google Wallet or Paypal?
Google+ or Facebook?
None of those products are Google's core competency. They're almost all imitation products that are extremely late to the game and that, consequently, have a relatively high chance of failure. On the flip side, AWS, Dropbox, Paypal, and Facebook are all high-revenue market leaders with practically no chance of failing any time soon and owners who can't be enticed to sell out. If you were to replace these products with newer, riskier, less-profitable alternatives from smaller companies, I'd have picked the Google option every time.
Stability, profitability, and market dominance are the primary reasons I trust products to last, not company track record. If Dropbox made a search engine, Amazon made a webmail service, or Facebook made a mobile OS, would you trust any of them to outlast their Google counterparts?
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The probability of this shutting down given the history of Google shutting down non-core products before.
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The lack of customer support if something were to go wrong.
(=s) (understandably)
The lack of interest and skepticism shown by grandparent poster.
However, other companies, namely Microsoft and Yahoo might only have to deal with one or two of the above and can be said to be given a free pass at skepticism.
They want to provide very powerful incentives so they can take a small bit of every transaction.