Sorry, this is really not a coherent comment. I rambled.

It's a fair question though. Despite the "If you don't pay for it…" mantra that people like to spout off, situations like Sparrow and other paid services shutting down tend to worry me. And I know, it's odd, considering Gmail is free and Google as a tendency to shut things down (but I don't see them shutting down Gmail).

I guess the issue is that if I pay for it, I'm investing time and money into something I want to know will stick around. And because I'm a customer, I feel like I'm empowered to believe that. After all, if a company is charging me X amount, I think that charge should be related to keeping themselves in business. I hate the idea of a company that charges not being able to stay afloat because of their low prices. It's not even giving me a choice as a customer to pay more to ensure their service remains.

But here's the issue: Fastmail themselves may have been able to keep running indefinitely, but they're not Fastmail anymore. They're Fastmail from Opera. If Opera shuts down, what's the guarantee that they will let their purchases keep running?

Basically, since they sold themselves to Opera, they're at Opera's mercy to keep running. If Opera shuttered their doors or if Opera felt like pulling a Google Reader, there goes my mail provider. I'm iffy on the future of Opera as a company, which means I'm iffy on the future of everything they own regardless of that product's history.

At the very least (assuming the division is not operating at a loss) I think it would likely be sold off or spun out as a separate entity before opera shutdown.

Google had been around for over 10 years when it started doing bad things with its services too.

They sold to Opera, so clearly it wasn't sustainable by itself.

Actually, they were doing fine but they weren't able to grow.

Not to be rude, but "doing fine but they weren't able to grow" sounds like PR bizspeak for "unable to sustain themselves". It isn't like Opera is a company that can really grow Fastmail when they haven't even done that with their browser. I don't see how you could particularly trust Fastmail to be around for an extended period when they were recently sold to company few would consider stable and healthy.

Then again, I don't really see the point of not using Fastmail as long as you can export your stuff.

They explain the rationale for selling in a couple blog posts. They were a really small company, only 3 or 4 guys. They didn't have any "PR bizspeak" people. They were profitable for 10 years but didn't have the resources to expand into business accounts. It sounded like the meeting with Opera people was kind of a fluke.

It's the same reason I don't switch apartments even though one might be better for the money: it's a hassle.