[grey-area]

Failure is an acceptable risk to move forward.

It's certainly an acceptable risk for Google and other companies like FB - the short-term cost of innovation for Google is pretty close to zero. The long-term cost of reputation is perhaps something they're only now starting to realise.

Whether it's an acceptable risk for the users of these services is up to them, and many of them are deciding it is not, because these services can be so easily closed. Sounds fair to me.

I don't think anyone's forgotten the cost of innovation, they're simply aware that the costs of it are borne by users, not by Google.

[icebraining]

Whether it's an acceptable risk for the users of these services is up to them, and many of them are deciding it is not, because these services can be so easily closed

Yeah, Reader was closed just eight years after it launched. I didn't even had time to import all my feeds.

[grey-area]

Yeah, Reader was closed just eight years after it launched. I didn't even had time to import all my feeds.

The issue is how easily these services can be closed, not how long they last, in fact if they last longer it's worse for the users involved if they are suddenly shut down. Now free services for life doesn't seem like such a good deal, because the terms are that they owe you nothing and life may equal 2 months, 1 year or 10, it's impossible to know.

I didn't use Reader or participate in the Reader drama and feel it's a bit over-egged, but there is certainly a reputational cost to closing mainstream services or modifying them without consulting those who use them as Apple, FB, MS, Google, Twitter et al do regularly. This doesn't really apply if you have 10 users, but if you have 10 million and an ecosystem it can become important.

Building on top of these platforms like FB or G+ is in my opinion very risk for other businesses, so depending on something like helpouts is a huge risk for the people who might use it to actually sell/provide services and build a reputation, but very little short-term risk for Google.

[vvvVVVvvv]

>Building on top of these platforms [...]

Relying on an other business (platform, as a customer, [...]) for more than 25% (33, 50 your call)of your revenue is risky no matter the industry.

Relying a 100% is stupid.

[grey-area]

Relying... 100% is stupid.

And yet this is what FaceBook, Twitter, Google, Apple and many other web and OS corporations are encouraging people to do - build on top of their platform (be that FB apps, Twitter API, iOS/Android apps or web apps relying on a single-signon). They all want to own the platform which everyone builds and consumes on, and turn everyone else into sharecroppers.

With this particular service, it might be really great for connecting people to provide each other services, but as it also relies on Google+ (which, for example, people have been arbitrarily shut out of), and is provided by Google of Reader infame, is it worth an investment of time or resources? Perhaps as an adjunct to other services, but I'd be wary of depending on it in any meaningful way, as you say.

That may sound like common sense, but see the examples given above of platforms which try to push both consumers and developers into reliance on one tech company for essential parts of their online identity (professional and personal).

[Flenser]

I'm glad I was able to use it for those 8 years. Not bad for a free service.

[weland]

> Whether it's an acceptable risk for the users of these services is up to them, and many of them are deciding it is not, because these services can be so easily closed. Sounds fair to me.

I think an important bottom-line to this is that using an application you do not own, on a system you do not own, is not like running a program, it's like having a service done for you. Despite the web application misnomer, Google Reader was a service more than it was an application.

So all the other rules that apply to services apply here as well. The commercial entity behind it can simply decide to end it -- just like a restaurant can decide to stop doing deliveries for whatever reason, including the manager simply not wanting to do it anymore.

This isn't a disaster to anyone. It can be quickly turned into a disaster if you start basing your whole business model on it. Like when you decide to start a food delivery business that receives orders for restaurants that don't do home deliveries, but you only take orders for one restaurant and as soon as that closes, you're out.

[grey-area]

The problem often comes with data. If the service collects user data (and most services do), it is often a real problem when it shuts down. Suddenly none of the links work, the data is gone, and any reputation or network built up is also hard to retrieve.

If the service was offering a discrete operation on local files (by analogy with a desktop app or a restaurant), then it wouldn't be a great problem if it shuts down, you just find another.

However, going back to this service - someone using this help service to help others might build up a stellar reputation over 10 years, only to have the plug pulled on all their posts, and all the content disappearing or at best losing all its links in when Google decides to move on to Google++ and retires it.