It might be anathema to clients who like to eschew large corporate conglomerates as service providers, but sometimes hosted services run by those companies are the ones that are the most reliable (q.v. del.icio.us).

That has been true, indeed. However, it appears that may be changing with the shifting financial environment. Just the other day I read that Yahoo! was hoping to sell Zimbra and other similar assets that don’t fit its new strategy. Similarly, Google has killed many of its own products in the past, e.g.: Google Notepad, Dodgeball, and Jaiku.

If the core product is open-source software, I’m less worried. Maybe that alone won’t help everyone who’s left in the cold, but it does provide some people with options. But, in the case of delicious.com, Posterous, and Tumblr — along with many others (including bit.ly now that Google and others have jumped into the game) — I’m stumped as to why folks are still so trusting of these “free” online services.

Phillip.