This shutdown had an incredibly healthy discussion internally. The reality is that this service had been unmaintained for a long while, but we'd previously chosen not to start this deprecation process until we had a GA service we could actually have someone migrate to (Cloud ML Engine).
Additionally, it turns out that very few people were using it. That's not an excuse, but the reality of ongoing investment. I fought hard for this to be our expected 1 year term, and we had hoped to have a somewhat cookie cutter guide for "Here's how you reproduce this with TensorFlow". Quite frankly, the handful of users of the prediction API likely aren't the kind to happily port to TensorFlow (and this service has existed since the sort of App Engine only days, so they're mostly hobbyists, but I still care).
It's never great to "have to" turn down a service, but ultimately when forced between letting the code rot and become a potential security nightmare versus give the small set of users some time to retool, the decision was made to go with the latter. No new features is an easy way to keep something running forever, but keeping the damn thing secure requires a team to stay on top of it.
Disclosure: I work on Google Cloud.
Additionally, it turns out that very few people were using it. That's not an excuse, but the reality of ongoing investment. I fought hard for this to be our expected 1 year term, and we had hoped to have a somewhat cookie cutter guide for "Here's how you reproduce this with TensorFlow". Quite frankly, the handful of users of the prediction API likely aren't the kind to happily port to TensorFlow (and this service has existed since the sort of App Engine only days, so they're mostly hobbyists, but I still care).
It's never great to "have to" turn down a service, but ultimately when forced between letting the code rot and become a potential security nightmare versus give the small set of users some time to retool, the decision was made to go with the latter. No new features is an easy way to keep something running forever, but keeping the damn thing secure requires a team to stay on top of it.
Disclosure: I work on Google Cloud.