Microsoft‘s catching hold of the Wunderlist team is making friction years after the fact has been found. The founder of 6 Wunderkinder, Christian Reber, has asked to get back the task app to prevent Microsoft from closing it down.
Reber explains that there are people who still use it and love it, and this would prevent their wrath while Microsoft moves its focus to its To-Do app. Microsoft could hold the team and its priorities — the developer just wants to keep his pride and joy to remain combined.
Reber also said that he held nothing but only gratitude for Microsoft, the company and that he was simply upset that Wunderlist did not go ahead as planned.
It is a difficult situation for Microsoft. Wunderlist’s cloud has features that still run on Amazon Web Services and not on Azure, The Verge noted, but Microsoft cannot easily pick the plug after stating that it would only close down Wunderlist once To-Do had stated parity.
On the other hand, selling Wunderlist to Reber would cause its own complications — To-Do would have a direct competition by using rival services. The founder has planned to better it if he did get hold of it, including improved performance, brand new features, and open-source code.
While there are not any hints that Microsoft is about to consider Reber’s request, this definitely illustrates the mixed outcomes of the company’s app hold spree. Microsoft did well when it snapped up Acompli to hold on Outlook for mobile.
The buying of Sunrise, however, was less well taken by the public — people regretted the loss of Sunrise Calendar even as its features got their own way into Outlook. The Wunderlist buyout is somewhere in the middle. Microsoft may have made the extra effort to keep Wunderlist active, but its danger of pulling the app has made some people anxious.
