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by pbhjpbhj 895 days ago
Are any of those examples of removing a feature from a hardware device, which to me seemed to be the point of the parent. They're comparing car entertainment/GPS systems with phones.

Maybe 12 years ago, I had a device with sideloading that allowed me to run Plex (genuinely used for photo viewing). NowTV removed side-loading via a forced update and thus removed the principle reason I bought that device rather than another. Bought a FireTV stick after that and downloaded Plex from their appstore.
2 comments
wcoenen 895 days ago
@Longhanks wasn't specifically talking about hardware. They said "Maybe don't try to shut down public services that millions of people actually rely on" and implied Google wouldn't do such a thing.

Google did exactly this when it shut down Google Reader in 2013. Feedly saw an influx of 3 million new users in the two weeks following the shutdown.

https://web.archive.org/web/20170721090528/https://blog.feed...

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dukeyukey 895 days ago
They've definitely bricked hardware before (e.g. Stadia, likely Jamboard).
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