Not really.

GE may have stopped making a radio your parents bought in 1948, but it's perfectly possible it still works. How many perfectly functional devices have GE bricked simply because they were bored of supporting them? MS Windows drivers support just about every ancient crusty device MS ever made - apparently forever.

It's the web obsession with having every trivial action go through an online server - for data gathering - that breaks the consumer's implied contract with hardware devices: That they should simply work until physically beyond economic repair.

Most of those simple web API actions could function just as well on the LAN, so the device could function indefinitely - you'd just lose remote access when the Google API server shuttered. The 99% case of controlling lights or thermostat whilst in the home would still work, just no longer remotely from a hotel 1,000 miles away.

I can think of some pretty big Microsoft pivots, and I don't begrudge them their choices at all.

But it's curious that you only hear cries of outrage when Google kills products, not when other companies do it.

Why do you think that is?

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Media Center

Kinect

Zune

PlaysForSure DRM

Microsoft Money

Windows Home Server

Microsoft Kin Phone

Microsoft Mobile, previously known as Nokia

Windows 10 Mobile

The Band

TechNet

Hotmail

Live Messenger

Live Mesh

Groove Music Pass

Groove Music for iOS

Groove Music for Android

Encarta

Windows Small Business Server

Flight Simulator

Microsoft Works

Microsoft FrontPage

Windows Embedded Automotive, formerly Microsoft Auto, formerly Windows CE for Automotive, formerly Windows Automotive, formerly Windows Mobile for Automotive

I think that's because no one is suggesting that things shouldn't ever come to end of life. Ford stopped making the Model T.

If you already bought them, Microsoft Money, Encarta, Flight Sim, SBS, Works etc etc should all keep working. If you still have the CD you can probably install just fine, and keep on using them (if it's still meaningful). I'm sure plenty do just that, and perhaps some will for decades. Just no more new versions are coming. Sure MSN Messenger and other online offerings have been hard stopped.

For most of your list, no one hit what's effectively a remote kill switch, and stopped them working for everyone at the same moment. That's what killing an API does for an internet service, or hardware device dependent on that service. On such and such date $thing will cease working. Google does that all the time, hardware and software. So much that they got themselves a reputation for it.

Didn't wear out, die of old age, become obsolete, but they reached out and killed. It's qualitatively different.

Are you including all products that work, but no longer receive updates? Because yes, MS-DOS 1-6 ate no longer supported, windows 1.0-3.11, qbasic,...

All those would still work btw. You just wouldn't get updates / newer versions of them.

But if you're talking about services that rely on online servers it seems different. And these are services that no longer work once the plug is pulled.

For MS the list I can pull from memory is far shorter. In fact, i only remember Zune. I bet i missed several, but more than Google?

The health services Microsoft Band used were shut down. I'm not sure about the rest of the functionality.

Microsoft hasn't killed many online services, and besides Azure doesn't have dominant control of the internet like Google does. MS kills support for old box products and hardware devices, but that doesn't mean you can't still use them! (Also, what would we even kill? Bing? MSN?)

When Google pulls the plug on Nest, they burn an entire ecosystem, and piss off the people they should be working with on IoT. It's really stupid strategy.

I gotta say, I would never develop anything on Google because I would worry I end up with some little niche business that brings a little extra for my efforts and then they'll kill it. It's an added risk.

Seems like a bit of tu quoque fallacy there. It is irrelevant whether other companies 'do worse.'

Let's instead just evaluate Google's behaviour as it is.

Microsoft was founded in 1975, and GE was founded in 1892 (!), to Google's 1998, but there are likely angles that would make it interesting. Number killed/number alive? Number killed since y2k? etc

I’d tend to agree.

The difference is probably visibility.

Microsoft have for the longest time been hiding in the cushy enterprise segment where customers pay you halt development and kill products.

Closed-off products. Perhaps not even a resonable API. Definitely not public facing.

I’m kidding about enterprise software, but it’s kind of true.

Windows is “hiding in the cushy enterprise segment”??

Well for sure, when it comes to developer exposure.

This point was about “enterprise” software in general and the fact that many a project has been abandoned and put down in this space without much fanfare.

Also, many big companies tend to pay a lot of money for software the never actually use, hence “cushy”.

I think you have the wrong end of the stick. Plenty of companies do that, sure, but Microsoft has always been a very, very aggressive mass-market player. Their software is used in enterprise, sure, but it’s by almost every enterprise, not just isolated niches.

They’re competitive on prices too (although it’s tough when many of your direct competitors are free). Compare MS Office with something like Maya or AutoCAD, say.

You might be missing my point a bit.

First of all I’m talking developer exposure.

Many angry devs have sat in their cubicle swearing at MS & others product teams for changes made or products dropped. These products doesn’t necessarily have the visibility of google services.

What I’m further trying to say is that it’s a culture thing.

Times are changing and with it the business model of selling standardized crap to clueless, ignorant customers.

How quick this change comes for a company is dependent mostly on the inertia of it’s customer base i guess.

Businesses are starting realize that you need to take back control of data and process to increase opportunities for innovation as well as speedy delivery.

This culture has in ways been pioneered by for example google and others selling/providing services rather than software suites.

They have constant change as an inherent property of their organization and this leaks.

This is ofc just my take on it.

(Digression regarding prices: maya and cad are business drivers. You need to compare them to SAP or possibly the bizdev stuff from MS == not cheap)

There’s probably room for us both to be right, as MS is such a massive company with zillions of products.

I’m coming at it mostly as a client-side developer, comparing to platforms like macOS, iOS and Android (and the web!) where things are constantly in flux, with new APIs added and old ones deprecated.

Compared to those, Windows and .NET are extremely stable; they add new APIs, sure, but old ones tend to stick around and keep working for a long time (some would argue too long).

That’s not to say I like Microsoft platforms and APIs; they tend to be badly-designed, buggy and fragmented. But in my experience at least, old MS APIs keep on working whereas old Google APIs get deprecated and shut down. It’s a very different developer experience, with different upsides and downsides.

Sounds reasonable. There’s many perspectives to be had and I appreciate yours.

I’ve spent far too much time in the “enterprise” spectrum of this business and arguably this is were MS for example have made the bulk of it’s fortune.

The flux you mention could for many be a “good thing” assuming you can keep pace?