HACKER Q&A
📣 jareds

Any examples of hosted software failing do to attempts at saving costs?


With all the discussion around Twitter layoffs and the concern about site stability, are there any examples of a large, hosted software system completely failing and shutting down in a disorderly fashion do to cost saving measures gone wrong?


  👤 iwanttocomment Accepted Answer ✓
Of course.

In the news today, there's FTX (we won't even talk about something like Mt. Gox). https://www.coindesk.com/policy/2022/11/11/ftx-files-for-ban...

Recently, Insteon's entire IoT software platform suddenly and unexpectedly shut down when the company failed. https://www.iotm2mcouncil.org/iot-library/news/iot-newsdesk/...

You may remember streaming video service Quibi suddenly capsizing and disappearing a couple of years ago. https://www.theverge.com/2020/10/22/21528404/quibi-shut-down...

It may be pushing the definition of a hosted software system, but who could forget MoviePass? https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/MoviePass

A particularly weird one was Murfie, where you sent them your physical CDs to rip and stream, and who then suddenly disappeared leaving many folks' music collections in the lurch in a warehouse somewhere. https://www.theverge.com/2019/12/13/21019565/murfie-madison-...

Oh, let me add one more. Gobbler was a popular backup storage service for multimedia creators who one day just... lost everything when they didn't pay their cloud storage provider. https://gearspace.com/board/music-computers/1100884-psa-gobb...

These are just recent, high-visibility ones. Any number of smaller players have suddenly been yeeted into the sun.