A two-week shutdown notice is unbelievably short.
And given the way the Screenhero acquisition went, I wouldn't be too optimistic if I were an Astro user.
Screenhero was acquired by Slack, and while it wasn't shut down immediately, new signups were disabled. They eventually shut it down entirely when they released support for screensharing within Slack, but the experience of that is nothing like what it was with Screenhero. Even aside from forcing people to pay for a Slack instance just to screenshare[0], the actual video sharing experience just... doesn't work anywhere near as well. So the pattern seems to be:
- acquire product
- shut standalone product down
- replace product with inferior version of product, integrated into Slack
- charge more
[0] if you don't already share a Slack instance with the person you want to call, this is a really awkward workflow just to screenshare
For me, this is a knock against basically anything Slack related. Slack 100% has the power to ensure that Astro is around long enough for all parties to make a proper transition to appropriate solutions.
I get they want to keep Astro's clients around, but it's a big FU to companies that rely on Astro to have two weeks notice about changes potentially affecting their entire users base.
I agree. I've been nervously watching slack as a current Hipchat user, working out what our next move is (pretty much Slack or Microsoft Teams seemed the saner choices), and this makes me want to have nothing to do with them.
It reeks of arrogance. Sure I understand it was a acquihire, but that means you acquired the company and take on their obligations including moral. An it is poor form to dump customers / users out when they likely could have kept the services up for at least 3 months.
If slack doesn't care about that, then I am not sure this is a business I really want to have a dependency on.
Screenhero was acquired by Slack, and while it wasn't shut down immediately, new signups were disabled. They eventually shut it down entirely when they released support for screensharing within Slack, but the experience of that is nothing like what it was with Screenhero. Even aside from forcing people to pay for a Slack instance just to screenshare[0], the actual video sharing experience just... doesn't work anywhere near as well. So the pattern seems to be:
- acquire product - shut standalone product down - replace product with inferior version of product, integrated into Slack - charge more
[0] if you don't already share a Slack instance with the person you want to call, this is a really awkward workflow just to screenshare