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
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