The author of the article was disappointed that the service was being discontinued, but his main reason for writing seemed to be calling attention to how quietly Google announced that it was destroying data. People won't download the data if they don't know it's going away.
That is clearly not the case for the commenter whom I was addressing. He knows, so if the files he is worried about are deleted, it's due to his inaction. I don't want to see anyone just throw up their hands and accept victim status when there's a better option.
As for other people, I thought Google added a notice to the Groups files page along the lines of "Hey, dude, you might want to download this stuff before it goes bye-bye". I don't use the service, but that's what I heard. Was I misinformed?
EDIT: Yup, it's there. The notice, in bright red at the very top of the page, reads: "Google Groups will no longer be supporting the Pages and Files features. Starting January 13, you won't be able to upload new content, but you will still be able to view and download existing content. See this announcement for more information and other options for storing your content."
I mean not so much my inaction as I am no longer running those groups :-p
Actually what I was concerned about wasn't the disappearance of the data, but the disappearance of the feature. I chose groups because those features made it really easy to manage the entire group. I worked hard to set up a process around how the google groups worked. So the sense that the organization is "screwed" is that they will have to completely change the way the function internally and find a new centralized portal for managing there stuff.
As far as the warning goes they gave plenty of warning. I am just disappointed the feature disappeared.
