End of the Road for Xmarks

Lessons learned:

1. Adding a feature to someone else's product is a risky business model. If it's popular, the product-maker will implement your feature, at which point your goose is cooked.

2. Adding a free feature to someone else's free product isn't even risky. It is among the surest methods of losing money.

3. Know when to sell. The missed opportunity here was search. With their data and methods, Xmarks was able to improve query results for a predictable fraction of searches. At this point (2008), they should have sold to one of the up-and-coming search engines -- Windows Live or Ask.

I do not necessarily agree. There are a _lot_ of good _businesses_, which basically _fill the gap_ in other product.

xMarks is not like an cut-n-paste iPhone app (http://www.joelonsoftware.com/items/2009/06/10c.html), which becomes _useless_ after the vendor decides to implement the feature, rather a decent service (Chrome/Mozilla sync does not solve the syncing problem across browsers/iPhone/iPads etc.) which could not its business model.