Google's Person Finder is open source[1] and uses the People Finder Interchange Format[2], which was designed after Katrina specifically so that disaster relief organizations can quickly share this data so that data sources stay in sync and new ones can be quickly revved up (if traffic overwhelms some or, I don't know, a company decides to no longer host one).
Federation of this data is the most important aspect of it, because people use many different sources for news and information, and should not have to search for every possible database of missing persons to find the information they need. For example, after the 2010 Haitian Earthquake, CNN, the New York Times, the Miami Herald, and the Google Person Finder all shared data[3] so that if any one (or several) went down, all that information was still available from other sources.
In any case, I don't know if you were trying to score free internet points or just being snarky, but it's generally a good idea to do basic research before repeating non sequiturs.
We've had wars that run for decades, a timespan in which it's definitely possible for a company to lose interest (or even cease to operate altogether). Thankfully this doesn't seem to be an issue as long as the company running it uses the open data format as pointed out by magicalist.
Are you seriously taking advantage of this tragedy to bash Google for shutting down Reader? Wow, and I thought the Reader drama couldn't get any lower.
Reader isn't the first project Google (or Google.org) lost interest in or shut down. For me the big eye-opener was their "Project 10 to the 100": they got 150,000 entries for where to focus philanthropic funds, waited a few years with no updates and then donated a total of $10 million to 5 organizations.
Kudos for donating money, but they announced a big contest, got tons of input and made this seem like a big focus, and then when that toy wasn't fun to play with anymore they ignored it for a few years until somebody remembered they had money to give away.
