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Billion $ company buys an awesome product -> Billion $ company shuts down the awesome product.

Typical day. Nothing to see here. Move on.

Is there a way (outside of founder stubbornness) to reverse this norm? It's a pity that this has become the trend.
Pay for products. Use companies that have a real business model.
Was BufferBox free? I thought they charged $.
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Ostensibly they did, but early on they had so many coupon codes and promotions that I never once actually paid for it. And then it went free for a year after the Google acquisition.
I am very disappointed to see this. I have been using BufferBox since the beginning, and it provided immense convenience for both myself, and all of my friends who used the service as well. I was worried that something like this would have happened when they were acquired by Google, and now it has :(
Any alternatives out there?
In San Francisco, there's Swapbox. Don't know about in Canada
I just wish the team woulda got a boost after the acquisition or immediately wrapped into Google Shopping.

Shopping was the logical place the product would fit, but it seemed like they weren't given much of a boost after the acquisition and they sort of slowed a bit.

Is this Whatsapp's future? Stay tuned.
Probably not... way too many users. I think fb would take a lesson from Instagram and leave WhatsApp relatively independent. Besides, only an insane person would pay $19 billion for a company just to shut it down :)
$37 million dollars to waste...
well I am assuming that google saw some strategic reason for spending that $.
"Important Foo Update" is almost always actually a "Downdate"