
Meebo discontinued: shutting down on July 11, 2012 - superasn
http://www.meebo.com/support/article/175/
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linhat
Sorry for the language, but WTF GOOGLE? Meebo has been around since _forever_
(well, actually 2005) when it was only a web messenger and used by a LOT of
people whenever you couldn't or wouldn't want to install a native messaging
app, or messaging was blocked on your network. I actually know people that
used Meebo exactly for that reason, no installation required and furthermore
if you created yourself a Meebo account, you had all your different messaging
protocols available and you had logs wherever/whenever you wanted/needed them.

It makes me really sad to see this piece of _internet history_ (if one can
call it that since it's not _that_ old) getting axed, especially getting axed
by a company this big which could surely afford to keep those servers running
(maybe a meebo engineer could chime in on that since I have no idea what it
takes to keep these running).

Surely meebo started changing its business angle quite a while ago but I don't
think they would have cut the service that made them what they are today. That
said, I really hope Google keeps its fingers of ANY service I enjoyed in the
past.

~~~
Karunamon
Honestly, there are better web messengers out there. Off the very top of my
head, there's IM+ and eBuddy. Hell, even Trillian has a web version now.

~~~
Maxious
There's also Google Talk in Gmail/Google+ ;)

~~~
kylebrown
Speaking of google, when the hell are they going to release a GChat app for
iOS? The GMail web page on iOS doesn't have GChat, so I went searching for an
app on the Apple App Store a while back and found one. I'm pretty sure it was
just a UIWebView wrapper which sent a different user-agent to fetch the
desktop version of GChat, and it wasn't long before it broke (I think google
had changed the GChat URL).

~~~
r4vik
it's just xmpp, just download an iOS XMPP client and you're all set. Same with
FB chat.

~~~
evilduck
You won't get push notifications without turning over your Gmail credentials
to a third party. Google handles that for you for the official Android client.
I only do it with application specific passwords and two factor
authentication, but it's still an annoyance.

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jaysonelliot
My first thought was "this is sad news for users of their great IM client, but
at least it means no more Meebo Bar."

Then I read: _NOTE: The Meebo Bar will continue to be available to site
publishers and will see continued improvements and new features in the weeks
and months ahead._

So, basically, the worst of both worlds.

~~~
heretohelp
Meebo Bar makes money and maintains a number of partnerships that are useful.

The IM client does not.

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mrchess
What is with all the hate? Meebo tried, tried again, they failed, so they
exited.

1\. Meebo Messenger was great, but was not pulling in nearly enough revenue

2\. Meebo tried to pivot to an advertising bar for more revenue with no luck

Understand that Google probably didn't buy Meebo with the intent of shutting
its services. Meebo was most likely already failing (hence the 70MM overall
raise and 100MM exit), and would have had to shut down anyway. However the
founders were, luckily, able to exit the company first.

Meebo was great at its peak, but Google didn't kill Meebo. It was already
dead.

~~~
citricsquid
Huh, so if Meebo is already "dead" why _did_ Google buy Meebo? Google bought
Meebo last week!

Surely the conclusion from this is that Google bought Meebo FOR the Meebo bar,
not that the Meebo bar has failed. The Meebo bar product is the one they're
continuing!

~~~
bpm140
Google bought Meebo for the team, not the product.

~~~
citricsquid
I assumed that wasn't the case as in the original comment thread people
reported that Meebo had been letting staff go because of the acquisition,
although I guess that could mean they're only interested in a small portion of
the team. My mistake for discounting that possibility.

~~~
bpm140
They let go people from the sales team. Execs, engineering and product were
all hired (assuming they made it through the standard Google hiring process).

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ricardobeat
Oh, come on. Fuck this.

Can we ever trust a service to keep running for even a third of our lifetime?

~~~
omh
The services that they're shutting down were all provided for free with no
obvious source of significant revenue.

If you were paying them and they were making a profit then you might have a
better chance.

~~~
mgkimsal
I haven't looked in to this particular instance, but in general...

 _why_ buy a company that has no significant revenue? It's not like it's some
shock to google - "oh no, meebo doesn't make enough money!?"

So... yeah, the services were provided 'free' in some sense, but meebo was
able to continue running before this. Just... yeah.. buy stuff, shut it down.

If it's not a significant source of revenue, it probably doesn't take a
significant amount of cash to keep it running for another 6 months to a year.

EDIT: I should have added, I understand the logical reasoning behind buying a
company for its assets/talent. Doesn't mean it's not annoying.

~~~
ljd
I believe Meebo was purchased to become part of Google+ not to be an
independently operated subsidiary of Google. This shutting down doesn't mean
that Meebo will leave the internet space, it just means that the next time
we'll see Meebo it'll be with a "Google+" logo on it.

Larry Page has been shutting down and consolidating divisions of Google for
the last 18 months. This appears to fit his strategy at the moment. Why pay
for two chat divisions?

~~~
mgkimsal
Why buy a chat service if you already have one?

They wanted the meebobar only, because it's cheaper than building their own,
or it's too entrenched to compete against. Those are the only two plausible
explanations that would make sense (to me, obviously) but neither actually
make much sense when applied to Google.

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sakopov
When Meebo announced getting bought out my response was:

"Nice, generic and overenthusiastic post-acquisition blog post. They'll likely
be shutdown within a few months."

Turns out i was off by a few months in my prediction. I still don't understand
what Google acquired through this purchase.

~~~
citricsquid
> NOTE: The Meebo Bar will continue to be available to site publishers and
> will see continued improvements and new features in the weeks and months
> ahead.

Answers your question, doesn't it? Google acquired them for the Meebo bar; I
would put money on it being acquired to become google+ified.

Edit: seems I was incorrect and they were acquired for the team. Disregard
this comment.

~~~
sakopov
But you see that was my point. I don't think there is a team or a good product
to acquire here. It hardly compares to previous Google's acquisitions.

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sahaskatta
I guess I no longer need to have an Adblock rule for the Meebo bar that
appears on so many websites...

~~~
callmevlad
Direct quote from their site:

> NOTE: The Meebo Bar will continue to be available to site publishers and
> will see continued improvements and new features in the weeks and months
> ahead.

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kierank
Good, I've hated the meebo overlay since day 1.

~~~
joering2
Would you care to say why?

~~~
Achshar
I don't like anything with a fixed position with sole purpose of sharing to
social networks. Looks very desperate and blocks the precious vertical pixels.
I don't mid fixed stuff on the _side_ of the content, but an overlay you can't
scroll off? an immediate turn off.

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nirajd
does anyone see a trend? startups' general exit is through acquisition. how
can you secure customers when your potential users know that some day, your
marginal revenues will require you to exit through acquisition? services
getting shutdown shortly after..

~~~
johnrob
While most exits are indeed via acquisition, very few startups actually exit.

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blackysky
that's a great opportunity for any meebo alternative out there because a lot
of people were more then happy to use meebo...

~~~
hinathan
Not enough to keep Meebo independent.

~~~
ricardobeat
What do you mean? They never asked for my money.

~~~
mibbitier
Something makes me think what with the amount of investment they got, their
aim was an exit, rather than anything to do with customers or users.

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dbh937
I wonder how long it'll be until we see Meebo integrated into Android and/or
Google webapps. I personally think it's sad to see Google buy a company and
then shut down it's services.

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pixie_
I guess the 'dont be evil' phase of google is long past huh.

~~~
jyap
You must be new here. But seriously this is a surprisingly fast phase out with
no further announcement from the new owners Google. No publicly stated
alternatives or transition plan.

~~~
Karunamon
Not sure what "transition plan" they could possibly offer. They only exist as
a frontend to other IM services. It takes literally 5 minutes to duplicate 10
IM accounts on another identical service (IMO,ebuddy,trillian,implus).

The only thing they had of value were the logs, and they're giving those out
to download.

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kevinsd
Now that Meebo found an exit, they ditch IM users who the acquiring company,
Google, does not care either.

Nobody could be blamed. But perhaps one thing meebo could do is to coordinate
with meebo messenger alternatives to help users to switch.

Personally I use imo.im. I hope it can stay long and focused. At least so far
it has a very IM-focused name. :)

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ksat
I kind of don't get it. Why do big companies buy other successful companies
just to shut it down? Can't they just rebrand it or something? If they can't
why even buy? Just for acquiring the technical talent?

~~~
tyrmored
That, and heading off future competition. If Google were planning, for
example, on releasing a multi-protocol web chat application of their own in
the next few weeks, this would be a well-timed move.

Using Meebo's code base to make their own application might have been
preferable to rebranding it in this case.

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mudrast
I think that in less than one year we will have a Google+ bar... They bought
the bar and the team to integrate Google+ on every website. Google
Friendconnect bar + Meebo bar = Google+ bar.

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CYPHERDSOUL
I'm curious to see how Google will integrate it into +

~~~
erikb
Will they? They already have GTalk. To me it looks like they just wanted to
take out competition.

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mixmasteralan
The iPhone imo app should see a surge in downloads.

~~~
eurleif
I think it will stop working too without access to their servers.

~~~
fallenhitokiri
If we are all talking about imo[1] I do not believe it will stop working - at
least I do not see any connection.

[1] <https://imo.im/>

~~~
eurleif
Oh, my bad. I took 'imo' as 'in my opinion', and thought the comment was
implying lots of people would rush to download Meebo's app before it's
discontinued.

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wedesoft
IMO Meebo for Android is a really good multi-protocol chat client. A bit like
the Pidgin free software for the desktop.

~~~
Macha
Meebo for iPhone was a good app. Meebo for Android was garbage, unless they
updated it last year. It had basically no features. I used it when I first got
my phone as it was a name I recognised, but later switched to imo, which is a
much better app.

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user49598
Bummer, was a super useful service. Would be a great benefit to society if
they open sourced the messenger.

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huhtenberg
So Google cuts a head off a popular multi-protocol IM client. I wonder why.

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erikb
sometimes it's so good to listen to your feeling. I switched from meebo to
other chat services very, very long ago.

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ne0codex
There's still reddit..

~~~
aioprisan
until Google buys them too and shuts them down a month later

