I don't get the reaction here.

The online service will be shut down but the bulbs will continue to be locally controllable and Philips is releasing a dedicated app to interact with the v1 bridge.

Is it really such a huge deal that you can't access your bulbs over the internet? What's the use-case for this? Are you controlling your lights while you're not home? Do you not have access to the network the bulbs are connected to when you're at home?

I have Hue installed and this just seems like a non-issue to me.