for any reason
at any time
> 7.1 Discontinuance of Services. Subject to Section 7.2, Google may discontinue > any Services or any portion or feature for any reason at any time without > liability to Customer.
Let's take a look at Section 7.2:
> 7.2 Deprecation Policy. Google will announce if it intends to discontinue or > make backwards incompatible changes to the Services specified at the URL in > the next sentence. Google will use commercially reasonable efforts to continue > to operate those Services versions and features identified at > https://cloud.google.com/terms/deprecation without these changes for at least > one year after that announcement, unless (as Google determines in its > reasonable good faith judgment): > > (i) required by law or third party relationship (including if there is a change > in applicable law or relationship), or > > (ii) doing so could create a security risk or substantial economic or material > technical burden. > > The above policy is the "Deprecation Policy."
To me that looks like a reasonable deprecation policy.
It might be, until they jack up the prices 15X with limited notice (looking at you, Google maps [1]). No deprecation needed, just force users off the platform unless they're willing to pay a massive premium.
[1] https://www.google.com/search?q=google+maps+price+increase
The fact that they're all Google makes reputation damage bleed across meaningfully different parts of what's in truth now a conglomerate under the umbrella name Google.
If they ever do deprecate something people have built on though they're gonna get absolutely crucified. That's probably better protection than any terms of service.
They do this all the time, and they get crucified every time. I built a Google Hangout App and a Chrome App, both of which were platforms eventually shut down.
This is where the meme came from, and it's why I personally stopped building on top of Google products. A 1-year deprecation policy is no assurance to me if I plan for my app to live longer than that.
If a service Google runs is losing money, what reason would they have to not shut it down?
Which is the deprecation policy. (I mean I share your frustration with Google's what-appears-to-be-at-least haphazard policy of shutting down services instead of trying to gain traction. But, let's not misrepresent what they say).
I don't think it's wrong - they can deprecate any service they want to do whenever they want, unless people have paid for and signed a contract that says otherwise which I guess people aren't doing.
But the policy doesn't really guarantee anything at all does it, due to the reference escape-hatches? It might as well not exist?
"Subject to the deprecation policy [which says that Google will give at least 1 year notice before cancelling services], Google may discontinue..."
In other words, at any time, google can give you a years notice.
(I work at Google, but am not a lawyer and this isn't official in any capacity).
Please don't selectively quote things out of context to give a misleading impression.
> commercially reasonable
> substantial economic or material technical burden
Is one engineer working on an old service to keep it alive commercially reasonable or a substantial burden? I don't know. Do you?
In practice this policy lets them shut off anything they want any time they want. Again it's their playground they can do what they want unless they signed a contract saying they'd do something else for you so I don't have a problem with it.
To be clear, that policy is a contract. And those things would be decided by a jury. And if my understanding is correct, the reasonable person standard applies. So you can answer this yourself, do you think a reasonable person would believe that your interpretation is valid?
If not, why mention it?
Caveat emptor, folks.
