The end of ownership

[supergee]

Taking a lesson from the producers of DRM books, Google is shutting down products it sold us and is tired of supporting

Thanx to andrewducker

Comments

[johnpalmer]

What bugs me about this is that it seems like it shouldn't be *too* hard to create a private application for this and allow the product to continue.

But another thing that bugs me about this on a deeper level is, as is said below (well, "above" since my comment came later!) that there are too many people seeing a physical thing that is only a link to something that's out there owned by someone else, and it will only last as long as that someone else gives a damn about it.


Microsoft now offers "Office 365" - you get all of the Office programs, and IN THE CLOUD!!!!!!!!(etc, include the "eleventy-ones" as needed)

And... it's not the world's worst idea. And yet... and yet, I like having Office 2003, or 2010, say, and knowing that, worst case scenario, I still have Microsoft Word and Access and Excel - none of the fanciest bells and whistles, but still I *have* them - forever and ever. And maybe they'll crash, and maybe I'll have to uninstall them every time I want to connect my machine to the internet (because some oddball security mess-up allows them to be compromised even though I'm not actively using them!) but they are by-god-and-golly *MY* programs, for as long as I have a working copy of Windows or a good enough emulator.

It's bad enough that small techie crap like this can fall apart - I know there's some threat of cars failing if a car company's firmware/software isn't supported any longer. I recall hearing that discontinued John Deere tractors have been running into similar issues.