I think Google abandoning Google Scholar in the near term is unlikely, particularly if there is not a viable public alternative or it is not transformed into one. This is not a full argument to that effect, but there are likely many benefits that accrue to Google by offering Google Scholar to the public. Some of that is discussed in our paper – in a section on “FREE” (also a critique of the charity framing). See also these comments on Quora from Kynan Eng (HT). Also, see our paper for why this fear should be balanced against concerns about the status quo–which I touch on in this tweet.
But, here are a few tweets mentioning such a fear (and see the ranging discussions w/in):
With Google Reader gone, is Google Scholar next? http://t.co/BMb1MHOKY8
— Scholarly Kitchen ((???)) March 25, 2013
This apparently is effective April 29th. Had I gone down that road, I would have effectively had a couple of months to figure out how to migrate .5 PB of data to a new solution on top of the grant deadline I need to make.
— Bryan William Jones ((???)) February 7, 2022
God help us if Google decides to kill Google Scholar.
One of these days, google is going to decide that it's not interested in google scholar anymore, and this app will go bananas.
— Duane Watson ((???)) June 8, 2022
I'd argue that Google Scholar plays a critical role in modern research. It is free, and it absolutely crushes every other scholarly search engine, including specialized ones 👇
— Ethan Mollick ((???)) November 1, 2022
Though it is a bit scary that it seems to be a tiny team & it exists only by the charity of Google… pic.twitter.com/kNFJMVZ52F
HT: Antoine Blanchard for linking the (???), (???), and (???) together: here and here.