[_match]

This is nonsense. Gmail is free. Inbox was free. Google Search is free. You can launch a profitable business on Google Cloud or Firebase in the free tier. They built Kubernetes and Go, for free, and it's very easy to port your Cloud infrastructure anywhere. You can translate text to any language, for free.

What exactly do they owe you?

Not enough people were using Inbox. It was an experiment and now they're moving on.

[manquer]

Gsuite also had inbox and Gmail and they are not free. Users who pay for those care. Next time I have to make a choice on Google product, most likely will reject it coz I can't really on them to either maintain it or give actual human support either

MS is probably supporting XP in the embedded world. If you are not selling to consumers you have to be prepared to do that

[aembleton]

Only if the administrator has allowed Inbox. Mine doesn't. Maybe most of them don't and so keeping it alive can't be justified.

[manquer]

That's the difference between with MS and Google(i.e. enterprise and consumer), it doesn't matter how small the user base is, once a feature/product is GA to paying customers, you maintain it for a reasonable amount of time (>>> 1 year ) If you are not sure whether it will have usage/ interest, do your research , but once you go GA stick to it. Even if you are maintaining it for one customer, it shows the commitment you are showing to your customer , builds a lot of confidence on the vendor - Google doesn't get mine today.

   * I meant the SLA for notice of deprecation not the lifetime of the product

[nicodjimenez]

You're right they owe you nothing, but that goes both ways!

When companies launch experiments and features that people actually like and then take them away, they piss some people off.

The bad PR they are getting from this means they didn't make it clear they were going to discontinue the service in 2020 (or something like that) and make it super easy to transition.

It's pretty weird they wouldn't just keep their Inbox service up and running and minimize maintenance costs.

Seems to suggest they want to make big changes to the underlying data storage and don't want to worry about backward compatibility.

[nathan_long]

> This is nonsense. Gmail is free. Inbox was free. > What exactly do they owe you?

This is oversimplified. Google makes products expecting something in return: users provide it data and ad revenue. More directly, users invest time and thought into learning it and integrating it into their lives. Google invited people to depend on it, and after they did, it killed the product. That's real hours wasted for real people. It's not irrational for them to feel betrayed.

Yes, Google has the right to kill a product, just as you have the right to tell a party guest to leave your house. But don't expect them to love you afterward.

> Not enough people were using Inbox. It was an experiment and now they're moving on.

Why weren't enough people using Inbox? Speaking personally, I never tried it because I expected exactly this. I don't want to waste my time on things that will be shuttered.

Google seems to think that each product is an independent experiment. But it seems more likely that each "experiment" they end contributes to the failure of subsequent ones.

Google doesn't owe people products. But people don't owe Google goodwill, either. And without goodwill, it can't launch new products.