Free is Not Forever

In the wild west of Web 2.0 services-we-didn't-know-we-needed - another player called Grand Central that promised "one phone number you can keep for life" has told 434 users that they must change their number.

Ooops.

The service was acquired by Google - and they had a nice little nifty "beta" in their logo - so I guess everything is good. Right? Tell that to the 434 people who had to change their one number.

Roy Schnider posted the email he got from Google as did Judi Sohn - both of them were justifiably pissed off. Basically, Google said in the email "oops, my bad - but it's beta software so shut the hell up - oh, and we're really sorry."

The moral of the story is: It's FREE SOFTWARE PEOPLE - don't have business cards printed and don't rely on this stuff for real! You still can't get something for nothing and expect it to work 100% of the time all the time (e.g. Skype).

You should have local backup copies of your documents on GoogleDocs (or Zoho or Salesforce.com), you should keep a backup of your IM logs if you use a free IM client...

Please - use some common sense. This is the new tech bubble - and all these services that you come to rely on may get gobbled up in a minute's notice - so don't get caught with your digital pants around your knees.

Repeat after me - "Free is not forever, Free is not forever, Free is not forever..."