I guess the transition is still in progress. I have been Instantiations customer so far and expected to hear about this (the free tool release) update directly from Instantiations or Google. They say its free but I do not see any license information apart from the GWT's Apache v2.0. If Google releases these tools under Apache license then they must release the source code of these tools as well which I could not locate from their website.
Each product is now under the standard Google Terms of Service (TOS) which is included in the docs (see http://code.google.com/webtoolkit/tools/wbpro/tos.html for example) and within the products themselves (seen during installation, for example). Google has not made any announcements about open sourcing any of these tool (under Apache or any other license). Since the products are now free, they now longer have an explicit license and activation requirement. So much for all of those bootleg copies and illegal serial number key gens out there ;-)
This raises questions about Eric's involvement. I guess he's a Software Engg Manager with Google now. Will he continue to drive development with Google or are we getting a new leadership here?
Eric (me) remains very much involved with all of the former-Instantiations tools ;-) Check out our product forums and you will see that I have not reduced my involvement in the slightest.
Also, the RCP, SWT and Swing designers are no longer available as stand-alone products. Does this mean that they would not receive the same amount of attention as GWT designer considering Google's focus on GWT?
SWT Designer and Swing Designer were offered as ala carte products at Instantiations because they were sold commercially and folks only wanted to buy the minimum they needed. At Google, we decided to simplify our offerings and reduce the number of products. Since all of the components of WindowBuilder are now free, you can now just get it all at once. The sub products are still distinguished on the update site, so you can pick and choose the sub products, if you really want to. RCP Developer was basically just a bundle of SWT Designer and WindowTester/SWT which are both now freely available as part of one of the other products, so there was no reason to preserve that configuration.
What about support? Will Google provide the same commercial quality support for a free tool?
As to support, You will have to judge that for yourself over time. We have certainly not let up in the slightest since we joined Google. In fact, as you might expect, we have been doing even more support since our relaunch than when we were at Instantiations. Customers with paid support contracts will continue to receive the same level of support post-acquisition as before and continue to have access to special customer-only support channels (as was the case pre-acquisition).
And what happened to CodePro Profiler? Is it being discontinued or is it being merged with AnalytiX?
CodePro Profiler is not being merged with AnalytiX and is still available to pre-acquisition customers. Google is still evaluating what to do about CodePro Profiler as a product longer term.