Nobody talks about how many tools quietly shut down

I was going through my old bookmarks and found three products I had saved from Product Hunt over the last couple of years that simply no longer exist. They are just dead links now, or a short message on the landing page thanking people for the support.

It feels strange because when those tools launched, they had hundreds of upvotes and active comment sections with people saying they would use them forever. Then at some point, the project just stopped, and nobody really mentioned it. The original launch page is still sitting there, frozen in time and full of optimism.

I know most side projects do not last, and that is just part of how building software works. Still, it has made me much more careful about what I rely on. I find myself checking whether a tool has an actual team behind it, or if it is just a solo creator who might move on to something else in six months.

Do you think about a product's long-term survival before committing to it, or do you just use whatever works right now and deal with finding a replacement later?