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Urban Airship to shut down SimpleGeo

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Re: Urban Airship to shut down SimpleGeo

#21

Post by runako »

ceejayoz wrote: post #12
MatthewPhillips wrote: post #8

> In order to deliver on this aggressive vision in the shortest amount of time possible, we need to focus our product development efforts. Let me get this straight. You want to focus on developing your product, but you want your customers to focus on migrating to another provider so that you can focus on your product. This is a pretty shitty way to treat a paying customer. A two and a half month notice is basically a…

> I'd be surprised if you kept any of those customers. So would I, considering they're shutting down the product... Roughly three months warning, plus free service during that time, plus free Urban Airship Pro for six months seems pretty reasonable to me. What length of time would you have considered fair?

3 months of warning for the shutdown of a product with no drop-in alternatives is really an insult. Look closely at the migration page (https://support.urbanairship.com/customer/portal/articles/31...) and you'll get a sense of the effort to replace SimpleGeo. For instance, the recommendation for users of the Context product is to read the Wikipedia page on R-trees, then download various census etc. data to replicate the functionality in-house.

This isn't about users being too lazy to switch to option B, this is about SimpleGeo building an innovative service and then abandoning its paying users.

Re: Urban Airship to shut down SimpleGeo

#22

Post by andrewem »

brianbreslin wrote: post #3

Anyone know of any sites using SimpleGeo for their location infrastructure?

I'd been considering using it through Heroku to be able to find nearby bus/train stops in a public transit mobile web app. I see that SpacialDB is in private beta as a Heroku addon (http://addons.heroku.com/spacialdb) - does anyone have SpacialDB experience? I'm looking to find nearby points out of a database of ~5000 locations, namely all the public transit stops in the Boston area.

Re: Urban Airship to shut down SimpleGeo

#25

Post by earl »

runako wrote: post #21
ceejayoz wrote: post #12

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> I'd be surprised if you kept any of those customers. So would I, considering they're shutting down the product... Roughly three months warning, plus free service during that time, plus free Urban Airship Pro for six months seems pretty reasonable to me. What length of time would you have considered fair?

3 months of warning for the shutdown of a product with no drop-in alternatives is really an insult. Look closely at the migration page ( https://support.urbanairship.com/customer/portal/articles/31... ) and you'll get a sense of the effort to replace SimpleGeo. For instance, the recommendation for users of the Context product is to read the Wikipedia page on R-trees, then download various census etc. data to replicat…

   SimpleGeo building an innovative service and then abandoning its paying users
well, that's what companies do when they fail, go out of business, or are acquihired, ie a business failure by another name

Re: Urban Airship to shut down SimpleGeo

#26

Post by [deleted] »

earl wrote: post #25
runako wrote: post #21

Earlier quoted context omitted.

3 months of warning for the shutdown of a product with no drop-in alternatives is really an insult. Look closely at the migration page ( https://support.urbanairship.com/customer/portal/articles/31... ) and you'll get a sense of the effort to replace SimpleGeo. For instance, the recommendation for users of the Context product is to read the Wikipedia page on R-trees, then download various census etc. data to replicat…

SimpleGeo building an innovative service and then abandoning its paying users well, that's what companies do when they fail, go out of business, or are acquihired, ie a business failure by another name

[deleted]

Re: Urban Airship to shut down SimpleGeo

#27

Post by runako »

earl wrote: post #25
runako wrote: post #21

Earlier quoted context omitted.

3 months of warning for the shutdown of a product with no drop-in alternatives is really an insult. Look closely at the migration page ( https://support.urbanairship.com/customer/portal/articles/31... ) and you'll get a sense of the effort to replace SimpleGeo. For instance, the recommendation for users of the Context product is to read the Wikipedia page on R-trees, then download various census etc. data to replicat…

SimpleGeo building an innovative service and then abandoning its paying users well, that's what companies do when they fail, go out of business, or are acquihired, ie a business failure by another name

No, that's what Urban Airship decided to do with the service they bought. We're dealing with the only continuing entity in the equation here, Urban Airship, which is not going out of business. Urban Airship is making the decision to abandon their customers (they bought them) in a crappy manner.

Without working at Urban Airship or SimpleGeo (or being close to someone who does), how would one know that when Urban Airship said they were excited to acquire SimpleGeo to continue improving the service that it was BS, and that the search for a replacement should have been started?

More to the point, a more trustworthy company would comport in such a way that its paying customers don't need to know the difference. In this case, that might mean open sourcing components or giving enough notice that their customers could reasonably transition. A link to the R-Tree wikipedia page is not what I'd expect from a reliable vendor.

Re: Urban Airship to shut down SimpleGeo

#28

Post by indiekid »

runako wrote: post #21
ceejayoz wrote: post #12

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> I'd be surprised if you kept any of those customers. So would I, considering they're shutting down the product... Roughly three months warning, plus free service during that time, plus free Urban Airship Pro for six months seems pretty reasonable to me. What length of time would you have considered fair?

3 months of warning for the shutdown of a product with no drop-in alternatives is really an insult. Look closely at the migration page ( https://support.urbanairship.com/customer/portal/articles/31... ) and you'll get a sense of the effort to replace SimpleGeo. For instance, the recommendation for users of the Context product is to read the Wikipedia page on R-trees, then download various census etc. data to replicat…

Can't say I agree with you about us "abandoning" our users. SimpleGeo was acquired by Urban Airship and the decision was made to discontinue the service. Disappointing, sure.

Re: Urban Airship to shut down SimpleGeo

#29

Post by evgen »

ojbyrne wrote: post #24
nhangen wrote: post #23

So they didn't buy SG to get the founders, and aren't going to use the tech, so all that's left is customers, which they're not going to keep using a transition strategy like this. I don't get it...

Engineers other than the founders?

They could have just been hired directly. Why bother acquiring if you have no interest in 1) the IP, 2) the founders or management team, or 3) the customers?

Re: Urban Airship to shut down SimpleGeo

#30

Post by jeffreyk »

suking wrote: post #15
d_r wrote: post #9

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Thanks for posting this link! I've always wondered who designed the beautiful icons on their pages, and it's even more remarkable to see them in high-res.

They charge like $30k+ for website design - they better be good. SimpleGeo made someone money - a web design firm!

SoftFacade didn't design the SimpleGeo website, I did :)
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