[Klathmon]

I never got the "google shuts everything down" mentality that has become so prevalent.

I could easily beat those 4 with a multitude of examples from both Apple and Microsoft, that doesn't mean that any of them are untrustworthy, just that they evolve and continue to grow.

At least when google shuts down a service, they give a good amount of "heads up" to those using it, provide examples of trustworthy equivalent services from competitors, and ALWAYS provide an export function if it makes sense to have one.

[superuser2]

Apple and Microsoft may discontinue support/sales but the hardware/software they sold you continues to function. That is inherently not true of "cloud" services.

[wwweston]

> I could easily beat those 4 with a multitude of examples from both Apple and Microsoft that doesn't mean that any of them are untrustworthy

No, that's pretty much what it means. To varying degrees when you build on top of Apple, Microsoft or Google offerings, you're sharecropping rather than farming. Sometimes, they'll just find that it's in their interest to no longer lease out the farm to you -- or to change the rates/terms.

"Untrustworthy" might be an over strong term, if for no other reason than that invoking "trust" as a relevant concept in this context is probably itself incorrect.

[mst]

> I never got the "google shuts everything down" mentality that has become so prevalent.

Because their early marketing led people to not expect that of google, whereas with apple and microsoft it's just business as usual.