This is what happens to the huge majority of commercial software. It is abandoned and no longer works unless you run some awkward emulation and then makes it no longer interoperable (or with some games that require verification, they simply no longer work unless cracked).

Traditional software products become abandoned at a far greater rate than cloud products.

What company is going to keep around products that waste their time and lose money?

@Steven: The main thing that irks me about GR is that Google lied about the reason it was being axed.

I have had a growing aversion to Google in general for a while now. Their motto appears to be “Do no evil if we think we might be caught.”

I haven’t tried Keep, and I won’t. I am an Evernote *customer* whereas I’m only a Google *product*. I prefer the customer role. As a customer, I get support. As a product, I get “Who the f*ck are you, anyway?” Big Difference.

I love lastpass, but I don’t see a lot of value in their premium services. I would rather see them take features off the free version to provide more value to the premium version and to fund the company.

I can’t see where Google Voice provides any value to Google. Yet, I suspect it is a relatively costly service. What about Picasa? In search, Google scholar is great; however, is it reasonable to think that scholar can be successfully supported by advertising revenues the way that Google search is?

Back when it was still available, I had students in my college class setting up their own domains on the free version of Google Apps. The problem was the support burden it placed on me. On a daily basis Google would add, delete, or just rearrange capabilities. The process of verifying to Google that you owned a domain that you purchased via Google became quite Byzantine.

In comparison, if you purchase a client-side application (Office), you have a fixed implementation of that application. You can decide when you want to expose your users to changes.

As a “techie” I love the constant stream of ideas and changes. As a business person, I long for stability and longetivity.

But Google terminating reader is done in a bad taste. I’m sure there are plenty of smart people in Google but they handle this very badly.

I’m still waiting for any reader alternative announcement in Google I/O. Google could be holding into something.

Surely a lot of those developers with enough resources to survive will be reluctant to create new products relying on Google services that can unexpectedly be pulled out from under them. While looking for an iOS feed reader app before choosing Newsify it was tough finding ones that *didn’t* require a Google Reader account (as Newsify still does). Some developers (e.g. Feedly) might be opportunistic with GR’s shutdown but plenty, plus end users, will suffer at least short term negative consequences. I think it has the least impact on those who’ve only used Google Reader’s web interface; more migration options already exist.