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As opposed to other services, for which you sign up and expect them to last a lifetime?

Companies prune under-performing services or products all the time--nothing new. The key is allowing customers to exit gracefully:

1. Give them their data

2. Suggest an alternative

3. Give advance warning

4. Thank them

This is something you always need to consider, with any service. Google Labs first taught us that.

>Google Labs first taught us that

I think this concept predates Google Labs. Not sure if they were the first significant cloud-based product to do that (likely they weren't). But even before the cloud when one has all of the software on their own machine, there was still a risk that the company that made it will pivot away from it/go out of business and stop providing fixes, etc.

I prefer a company that admits they aren't giving attention to a product and stops taking signups, than a company that is happy to let people keep signing up even though it's left to quietly die in the background.

I would say this is acting with integrity.