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Comment by k-mcgrady | Hacker News Reader

The problem is spreading yourself too thin in the first place, getting people to rely on your products, and then pulling them. I think it's much more acceptable for a small business like 37Signals to do this than a large one like Google. Google has the resources to keep products around, 37Signals doesn't.

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Sure, it's inconvenient for the end user. But as someone who's started a few projects myself, I would hate to think that starting something means you vow to support it until the end of times no matter what happens.

I think the target market has a big influence here.

For end user software, it's not such a big deal to drop support.

But for a project like Basecamp, businesses are buying it and potentially investing a lot of time and money to integrate it into their processes. Companies buying that kind of software expect it to be around a while. It's a bit disingenuous to sell to them knowing it may not be supported after a short time.

Even if you have the resources to support something, should you if its not your core focus? Personal I feel that Google is still run as a startup, which is fantastic however people expect Google to be a corporate company.

How is google anything like a startup?

I meant startup as a culture not in the terms of funding. The fact that Google starts and closes down products very frequently is evidence of this. What about Google X? Isn't that a bit like a startup?

Maybe I meant to say that departments WITHIN Google are run like startups not Google itself.

>> "people expect Google to be a corporate company."

It is a corporate company. When millions of people rely on your products you need to be careful when introducing new ones and pulling old ones. I don't think you can run a business like a startup forever if you have millions/billions of users. You cans till maintain some aspects of that startup culture but there are other aspects you have to leave behind. You have to think of how anything you do is going to affect people's long term view of you. The Reader shut down may not have affected a majority of Google's customers but now some people are wary to adopt new Google services. If you pull that kind of thing often enough you damage your long term prospects.

Indeed, Google is a corporate company. I probably meant to say that certain departments have the culture of a startup.

My main point (and question) of my comment was in the first sentence.

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