As a part of the most re­cent Google’s spring clean­ing some ser­vices people rely on are get­ting closed, most not­ably – Google Read­er. The in­ter­net is busy with voicing their dis­sat­is­fac­tion and swears to­wards Google, but I’m yet to see a post which would be a fit­ting rep­res­ent­a­tion of my view of this situ­ation, hence this post.

First of all, a dis­claimer – I have to point out that I’ve been us­ing Google Reader for my per­sonal read­ing needs and its API for my open-­source pro­ject. I’d say I am in a po­s­i­tion to be more angry than most of the users. The found­a­tion my pro­ject is built upon is dis­ap­pear­ing after all!

Prob­lem is that no one ac­tu­ally has a right to com­plain about de­cisions Google re­cently made. When people sign up for Google’s ser­vices they are not prom­ised the ser­vice will be kept avail­able in­def­in­itely. Sure, it is not in Google’s in­terest to shut down it’s prof­it­able pro­jects, but a com­pany has the right to de­cide which ones are prof­it­able enough.

It’s not just Google too – any other (free) ser­vice might dis­ap­pear any time without a no­tice. Es­pe­cially if cor­rect words are writ­ten in their terms of ser­vice and they most likely are. If you’re us­ing a free ser­vice you should be pre­pared for its dis­ap­pear­ance at the time you need the ser­vice the most.

In case one wants more sta­bil­ity, one ob­vi­ously should pay for the ser­vice with money. You may con­sider host­ing a FOSS solu­tion your­self as well. Do­ing so will re­quire an in­vest­ment of both time and money, and a com­plete con­trol of your own data is the re­ward.