This take on the Pocket shutdown resonates with me real hard:
“What began as a read-it-later app”, they assert, “evolved into something much bigger.” That was the whole problem: the mistake that led ultimately to this “difficult decision” by Mozilla. Pocket was a good tool. Its integration with Kobo, another excellent tool, made it that much more valuable to users like me. We didn’t need “something much bigger”. But by trying to turn Pocket into something much bigger, Mozilla actually killed it.
I feel like nothing has changed since I wrote about this kind of thing in… 2012:
This is the core of the disappointment that many of us feel with the Sparrow acquisition. It’s not about the $15 or less we spent on the apps. It’s not about the team’s well-deserved payout. It’s about the loss of faith in a philosophy that we thought was a sustainable way to ensure a healthy future for independent software development, where most innovation happens.