Turndown of Sichuan Earthquake Person Finder instance

[Nigel Snoad]

Dear Partners, 

PF Sichuan instance was turned down at 5/2 9:00 PM PDT (Friday 5/3 12:00 PM CST). 

Thanks to those groups and organizations who integrated with Google Person Finder, we appreciate your ongoing collaboration and support during the Sichuan Earthquake response. 

Given the progress of the recovery efforts, the significant reduction in queries to the personfinder web interface, API search requests and record updates we decided to deactivate the repository. This deactivation includes turning off the PersonFinder repository (including the API access) and deleting all data per our standard policies within 30 days. With this deactivation, in accordance with our Terms of Service, you should ensure that all copies (including backups) of records you have received from Google Person Finder are permanently deleted within 60 days after the date in the expiry_date field.  See http://zesty.ca/pfif/1.4/#data-expiry for more details.

To help facilitate continued development work around the PFIF standard post-deactivation, we have set up a development repository for China-specific testing purposes. We hope Person Finder and PFIF have been useful during this disaster, and look forward to future collaboration opportunities.

Thanks!