Microsoft updates To Do with new features as Wunderlist shutters ~5 years after its acquisition, and the founder behind it unveils work on a new app, Superlist
Capture Tasks & Set Reminders — Screenshots
Context & Ripple Effects
This closes a five-year arc that began when Microsoft bought 6Wunderkinder in 2015, ran through a 2017 preview of To-Do inside Office 365, and a 2019 relaunch in which Microsoft redesigned To Do to look and feel more like Wunderlist ahead of the replacement. The May 6, 2020 shutdown date Microsoft set last December has now passed, and Wunderlist is gone.
The twist is what the founder does next: rather than exiting the category, he is unveiling Superlist, a new to-do app — meaning Microsoft inherits Wunderlist's user base while the original creator re-enters the market against it.
First-order effects
- Wunderlist users must migrate to Microsoft To Do, which is absorbing them with a feature update timed to the shutdown.
- The founder's Superlist announcement gives displaced Wunderlist loyalists a named alternative to Microsoft's own successor on day one.
Second-order effects
- Microsoft's earlier decision to rebuild To Do in Wunderlist's image shows how hard it had to work to hold the acquired audience — Superlist now tests whether that audience stays with the acquirer or follows the original maker.
- Superlist re-enters a to-do market where Wunderlist's 2015-era integrations with Slack, HipChat and similar tools set the collaboration baseline a new app will be measured against.
Third-order effects
- The pattern — acquire a popular consumer app, sunset it into the parent's own product, and watch the founder spin up a successor — shapes how users price acquisition announcements: loyalty attaches to the maker, not the trademark, and every big-company shutdown seeds independent challengers.
The trend: Big-tech acquisitions of beloved productivity apps are ending in sunset-and-rebuild cycles that push original founders to relaunch as independent competitors.