[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.