They could end further development. They could end tech support. With the web services up and running, it would cost approximately nothing to simply keep them running. You essentially ignore them. Even transferring them to a new server a few years down the road is no big deal.
When your Canon or Panasonic or HP printers are a decade old and support long ended, you can still go to their site and find the device drivers for them. And the manuals. And sub-forums dedicated to them. Even after the site has been redesigned a couple times.
No - I donât think there is a capitalist incentive to do so. This doesnât surprise me at all and I donât fault google for it. I actually expect it give their history of phaseout of products theyâve called it quits with.
I do my part trying to create the world I want when I early adopt by supporting projects that support open development and open standards with my money and purchases. I donât know enough about the history of Revolv to know what their stance was when they were building their user community.
I guess one could say that going through a shutdown that is a little more gentle or that helps the community carry on their own server services if they wish at their own cost might help build some community goodwill that might make the markets more interested in your products in the future. If everything it going to be connected an need ongoing connectivity and server support to function, users will look at your history with this stuff, in an economic/capitalistic sense.
But I am bowing out. I donât fault the googlebet here, they are doing exactly what they have indicated they would do. The point about lifetime services and what that means for acquired products and services is interesting though. As always âlifetimeâ isnât always defined as the life of the hardware or end user, but the life of the support co.
And everything and everyone has an arbitration agreement written in the terms. The last car I boughtâwritten in the contract. A doctor I sawâwritten into new patientsâ paperwork.
I (still!) agree that this is a shitty thing for Google to do.
But we shouldnât expect Google to be around forever, just like we shouldnât have expected Revolv to be around forever. So we shouldnât expect their support to last forever.
Iâm saying a device that you own, supported by a shitty company, is more reliable than one you donât, supported by the most stable, most responsible company in the world.
ETA: Side note, if there really is a legal obligation for a company to honor the subscriptions and warranties of the company it acquires, that makes me feel much better about the legal system.
Well, my chance of ever buying or recommending a Nest just went to zero, so theyâve just lost at least one potential sale (in fact, I had been thinking of buying one so this isnât really a hypothetical.)
See also HP and mobile phones.
Did they sell any of these things in the EU, especially the UK? If so the EULA probably isnât enforceable, in the EU, unless you were able to read it before purchasing the goods and even then some contract terms are legally defined as non-binding.
I thought I read somewhere some years ago that shrink wrap contracts were declared null and void by a court in the US too, perhaps someone with more certain knowledge can comment.
There IS a solution to having manufacturers wield increasingly draconian control over the components that make our increasingly technology dependant lifestyles vulnerable to manipulation:
Open Source Hardware.
The hitch is that making hardware locally or on a small scale is âcost prohibitiveâ although having a âBrazilâ type future seems to be the alternativeâŚ
Making all the stuff you need from open digital templates might become possible in the not-too-distant future: you may wish to take a look at this open source project:
The comment about android isnât really fair. Android is open source, so thereâs really no risk of it magically no longer being supported. Even if google kills it tomorrow, there will still be support. Someone else will pick up the mantle. Hell, look at all the branches we currently have, (cyanogen or aokp for example), that are not at all managed by google, that people can run on their phones.
On top of which, using services like google docs (or telling people not to) because they may be discontinued in the future is also silly in my opinion. Docs are docs, theyâre pretty damn easy to move things around to another service if necessary, unless itâs something that depends heavily on formatting, in which case yes, you should probably be paying a bunch of money for word or something where you will always have access to that copy.
Similarly, when I set the alarm on my Fitbit the Fitbit needs to be connected to my phone via Bluetooth⌠but if the phone doesnât have internet access it wonât work.
My question there is - will your home insurance company hold you or google responsible in that scenario, maybe, for not using the alarm as its manufacturer intended?
Well I donât consider Android for a number of other reasons, so maybe open source will step in when Google turns its attention to the other shiny objects.
Google docs as you describe is fine for personal use. I deal with and make recommendations for organizations of 100-25,000 users. Movings those millions of documents and revisions and ensuring they are all gone from Google is far from an easy task.
Gmail and google docs are fine for personal use, I guess, (although I donât use either). But Google have shown themselves not to be a serious or trusted player in the enterprise market. I can only imagine Samsung and other android licensees must feel the same way. Google does not appear to be run by professional adults.
Perhaps if having an alarm is a requirement for your insurance - I donât know. My experience has been that alarms generally get you a small discount, but its not like they wonât pay (and then drop you) if you get burgled because Google had shut off your alarm.
If your IoT door lock had malfunctioned and left all the doors unlocked, though, I guess youâd have a harder time making a claim.
Considering that open source already does step in, that the entire android project is open source, this seems very likely.
The context of your google docs issue makes more sense now, iâd never recommend anything cloud for a big company like that. Give them something installed where they donât need to worry about servers other than their own, makes sense.
Samsung has been talking about making their own OS for their phones.. but so far itâs come to nothing. None of these companies however is locked to android, except those working with google on the nexus line. I donât particularly appreciate googleâs willingness to âkillâ things the way they do, but I also donât like the walled garden that is apple either, so iâd rather take the open source option, thanks.
And when you discover that the entire android project isnât open source, you can install CyanogenMod open source fork instead. If your phone allows it; carriers like Verizon and AT&T blocked OEMs from releasing retail devices with unlocked bootloaders.
And when you discover that CyanogenMod requires proprietary software and drivers to work with your phone regardless, you can install the Replicant CyanogenMod fork instead. If it works with your phone. And you donât need GPS, 3D graphics or other features.
Assuming youâre an expert on this stuff and have a lot of spare time.
I would point out that cyanogen runs on pretty much all the popular phones, and most of said popular phones are fully supported. I would also point out that I meant this as a last resort, that it will be picked up and supported all the more if google dropped android, using the fact that people are already supporting it as evidence. Also, on top of the project being (okay if not fully nearly fully) open source, if googleâs servers were to stop hosting android your device would not be rendered useless overnight, the os would not magically disappear, youâd just stop getting updates.
But this is completely off the original topic so iâm going to stop before this completely de-rails. Itâs a shitty situation, and i really do hate googleâs love of dropping things (I still miss google reader =( ).
So now that the things are bricked, not supported and the warranty has expired - is it still covered by the DRM or is it just a dead object waiting for someone to bring it back to life?
