So they did it again!
I just thought I share the news with you in case not all of you got the latest announcement or knew about it yet! Google’s update about shutting down App Maker by Jan-19-2021.
First of all if you would like to see the announcement, you can check it out here: https://gsuiteupdates.googleblog.com/2020/01/app-maker-update.html
To my opinion, this is a bit strange and a shocking surprise as well – to me at least. They stated in their reasoning in this that due to low usage… Which is really strange.
Nonsense!
According to the announcement, the service will be shutdown by Jan-19-2021, but new application creation will be disabled by April-15-2020… One of the strange things about this is how fast they are going with this. If you look at the transition of the old Hangouts, they are taking very long time with this, and they are giving us whatever time we want to adapt to the 2 new replacements (Google Meet and Google Chat)… Another example is the Google+ service, where it was disabled to consumers for a while to become a G Suite only service, then now they are making Currents in its place, and they never went with the shutdown process with this strange speed. Although there are many alternatives to Google+ for G Suite such as LumApps!
App Maker was still new!
App Maker has been in GA for a little over 1.5 years now. Before that between 2017 I guess until mid-2018 it was in beta. So putting the reason to shut it down on low usage is a bit unfair.
In its core App Maker is just a front end or a layer above the more common Apps Script. Now I really hope and pray that they would leave Apps Script alone and to never come close to that in the near or far future, because I am sure every single G Suite admin did – or will at one point – setup some workflow or some process to help them achieve their requirements and needs… So I guess it would be a disaster to shut it down as well for whatever reason (as stating low usage will be hard to believe this time…).
I don’t know about anyone else, but for me I saw a lot of projects and requirements come to me and my colleagues related to workflows and requirements to be done on App Maker. So I know that there is a lot of usage for that, and that usage was going to get even more.
I know people (and at one point I was one of them) who were preparing to he point where you will be able to monetize your App Maker apps, not to be surprised with the other way around and now we have to stop and abandon all of our investments into that.
Google offers or suggests some alternatives to that, such as App Engine on GCP, or their new acquisition AppSheet (which could be one of the reasons they are killing App Maker for..) and also they are suggesting Google Forms. The issue is, those solutions were there before even App Maker, so if you wanted to use them, you would have just used them, but instead, you are using App Maker.
Any hope to get App Maker again?
I am not sure how the decision taking process happen inside Google, and how products or services are selected to be shutdown – or to be given another chance if that is a thing in Google – but maybe if there are others as well who would disagree with this move from Google that noise might do something to hopefully keep App Maker around… But in all cases, and according to the update post, the service will be around for another year as ‘read only’ mode. New apps creation will be disabled by April/2020, so we got only 3 months until then. I’d say start thinking of alternatives from now and start migrating your workflows to other products and services so you don’t get disrupted when Jan-19-2021 comes!
Thoughts?
One final note, out of curiosity, I would really love to know about your thoughts about this. Do you use App Maker? And if yes, how do you feel with the shutdown announcement? Do you like to see it continued? And if you could take some action or do something to help keep it alive would you do that?
Can you please share your thoughts on this form, which is completely anonymous?
Disclaimer: The “App Maker” logo is a registered trademark for Google which I don’t own. The use of Google’s App Maker logo in this article is for demonstration/informational purposes only. Rights are reserved for their original owners.
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