Expanding on my rant on the changes on Google App Engine and Google’s culture around exploiting developers (and don’t get me wrong, there are a lot of companies that do this, Google isn’t the only one), now i see this Howcast announcement that they decided to focus on their own productions and that the user generated videos were going to be deleted and that reminds me that its not just developers, also users are used and then left out, more and more i think if you want to do something awesome or want to share your pictures or videos or content you have to host it yourself, do it yourself, depending on third parties is a major flaw, one more and more people regret.
I do understand that business change and decisions have to be made, but there is a right way and a wrong way to do it, for users if you are changing or closing down, please provide backups or alternatives to the users owned content, make it as easy as the service was!
If you are making tools for developers, think hard about what are you giving and their expectations, don’t make a product and promote it as something and then change the rules later on, don’t provide API’s and then change your mind when there are thousands of products that depend on those API’s (yes Google but Twitter too).
Nowadays even though i still use a lot of products, i create less and less content for other companies, if i create i own the platform as well..
