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Urban Airship to shut down SimpleGeo

urbanairship.com

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Re: Urban Airship to shut down SimpleGeo

#31

Post by runako »

indiekid wrote: post #28
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…

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.

I think you just disagree with my choice of words. But to the extent that a Web business can abandon its customers, this is what it looks like.

Re: Urban Airship to shut down SimpleGeo

#32

Post by ashbrahma »

jeffreyk wrote: post #30
suking wrote: post #15

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 :)

Could you post your contact info on your HN profile, so I can get in touch with you?

Re: Urban Airship to shut down SimpleGeo

#33

Post by indiekid »

AznHisoka wrote: post #11

We all know SimpleGeo was a failure. It doesn't count as an acquisition. It failed, and the founders moved on to Urban Airship.

To be fair, that's not true at all. It was an acquisition in every sense of the word at the time. SimpleGeo, customers, tech and team were acquired (apart from us founders).

Re: Urban Airship to shut down SimpleGeo

#34

Post by petrichor »

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...

they are going to use the tech, just as a feature of their push product, rather than as its own offering.

Re: Urban Airship to shut down SimpleGeo

#35

Post by hopeless »

It's depressing how little trust you can put in web services these days. I'd considered using SimpleGeo for a project and, like most people who did, it would have been a major component. Phew!

Antics like this make me distrust all web services in the future. They've got to have a really strong income stream and most definitely not a target of a talent acquisition, if I'm to rely on them.

Re: Urban Airship to shut down SimpleGeo

#36

Post by lurker17 »

runako wrote: post #27
earl wrote: post #25

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 Airsh…

> 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?

As a reader of HN, one would expect that acquired products are almost always shuttered within a year. Customers that didn't have year-ahead contracts are exposed to that high-probability risk.

Re: Urban Airship to shut down SimpleGeo

#37

Post by suking »

jeffreyk wrote: post #30
suking wrote: post #15

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 :)

Ok - the icons cost a lot though I'm sure ;-).

Re: Urban Airship to shut down SimpleGeo

#38

Post by pnathan »

petrichor wrote: post #34
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...

they are going to use the tech, just as a feature of their push product, rather than as its own offering.

Yeah, the straightforward reading is that they are folding the tech into their flagship product instead of running multiple products.

Re: Urban Airship to shut down SimpleGeo

#39

Post by imrehg »

sunkencity wrote: post #6

I really love SimpleGeos logos, but I have never grokked what problem they really solve for the user, but I totally get what urban airship solves. I've done a couple of app project with geo data but I don't see any benefit of having that part as a separate service. This is such fantastic logo and identity design work: http://softfacade.com/simplegeo.html

I have that sticker on my laptop, it started so many conversations when I'm coding in a cafe.... http://twitpic.com/86jy4y

Though I guess now it's a very different story to tell, compared to less then a year ago when I was hanging out with the SimpleGeo guys, it still going full speed ahead.

Re: Urban Airship to shut down SimpleGeo

#40

Post by foobarbazetc »

runako wrote: post #27
earl wrote: post #25

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 Airsh…

Urban Airship "bought" SimpleGeo, a failed service. Where "bought" means forcibly swallowed it based on VC pressure.

Anyone with half a clue could have seen this coming a mile away.

Why would you spend time and effort developing a failed product you didn't create when your highly successful product is your main focus?

Move along, nothing to see here.

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