Google Reader Being Retired 386
Edgewood_Dirk writes "According to the official blog, Google Reader is being retired on July 1st, 2013. The main reasoning seems to be its decline in usage over the last few years. Users and developers will be able to retrieve their RSS data using Google Takeout."
Re:Alternatives? (Score:5, Insightful)
Google is famous for just dropping products, if you are not prepared for your favorite thing to just 'disappear' or a forced migration don't rely on Google.
Re:Petition (Score:5, Insightful)
I use this every day - and most people in my office who see how useful it is also convert.
I'm not interested in the social integration/people following me/me following people that things like google takeout supply, just let me read my feeds in piece!
Grudge (Score:5, Insightful)
"Oh, you didn't use Buzz and you aren't using Google+?
Well, now we're closing something you actually use!
That will show you to belittle our products!"
Google+ is sort of what killed it (Score:5, Insightful)
Google Reader used to have some useful features which they actually removed in hopes of pushing people to Google+. Didn't really work, usage declined, now they're killing it.
Re:Alternatives? (Score:5, Insightful)
Google is famous for just dropping products, if you are not prepared for your favorite thing to just 'disappear' or a forced migration don't rely on Google.
I'm still dreading this November when I have to find a replacement for iGoogle. That's honestly the only thing that takes me to Google every day,
Re:Petition (Score:5, Insightful)
The cloud is the future! (Score:5, Insightful)
Google pretty much demonstrates the iron-cast reason why you shouldn't move your apps to the cloud every time they have another round of "cleaning."
Where the fuck are the APIs? (Score:5, Insightful)
Why the hell does TheOldReader not have an API? "We're working on an iOS app" just doesn't cut it for the kind of crazy weirdos (like me) that use Google Reader.
I mean, hell, even on my Nokia N9---a platform stabbed and left to die bleeding by the side of the road---there are multiple Google Reader syncing RSS clients. That's what I want Google Reader for, as a central sync repository for my RSS feed reading (some on a desktop at home, some on a desktop at work, some on a tablet, some on a phone, some on my e-reader, etc etc). If sites like TheOldReader are just a website and, at best, an app or two they write themselves for a few of the largest platforms then they're nearly as useless to me as Google Reader will soon be.
NewsBlur seems slightly better in that their apps for the mainstream platforms already exist, but that's still extremely weak compared to the flexibility of interface and location that the current Google Reader + APIs have allowed for.
Re:Petition (Score:4, Insightful)
First I see people using Change.org to complain about Electronic Arts and its DRM; now this, a "petition" to ask Google to keep a product?
To me it cheapens the notion of a "petition" to use it for this. The Change.org homepage spotlights domestic violence, migrant workers, firefighters, and more.
It just seems whiny and self-entitled to me to gear up and "petition" a private company on such trivial stuff as an RSS reader, or DRM. Just find another reader. But, if Change.org does not want to filter out this crap...
Re:WTF Google (Score:2, Insightful)
They kill Reader we kill Google+ (Score:5, Insightful)
I just went and deleted my Google+ account in protest of this and I would suggest that others do also. You are given an opportunity to tell Google why you are leaving Google+ and it seems to me there is no better place to sound off on this incredibly stupid decision to kill Reader.
The nightmare of cloud service (Score:5, Insightful)
With everything being in the cloud, what if the cloud is gone someday. The google reader is just an example here.
If google reader is just a desktop app, we can happily conitnue to use it even it is abandoned.
But if it is in the cloud, we are screwed.
Obviously just a sugar coating excuse (Score:5, Insightful)
The plain and simple truth is that Facebook style usage is more valuable or at least perceived as more valuable. RSS consumption is too passive by nature. Even when it did have the ability to 'share' items with friends (before trying to force those people over to Google plus), comments and notes were rare and an existing article was pretty much required before any discussion would happen (yes, you could create a note and share without an article attached, but the UI design didn't really encourage that usage. Now with even that removed, Google doesn't extract a lot of value from the users. It is a respectable implementation, but not a profitable one.
I personally plan to explore self-hosted solutions. I intended to when google reader dropped the share feature, but was too lazy and it still worked fine as a standalone reader.
Best in class (Score:5, Insightful)
It's one thing to shut down a product that is didn't make it out of the gate (e.g., Buzz), but it's another to shut down a product that is considered to be the premier product in its space.
I've been using Google products for a long time, and have understood most of their shutdowns. I used to think that as long as the service wasn't "experimental", it'd stick around. But going forward, I have 0 trust, since obviously even having the #1 product isn't enough.
Re:Petition (Score:5, Insightful)
Signed.
I'm not interested in the social integration/people following me/me following people that things like google takeout supply, just let me read my feeds in piece!
Agreed. I need a replacement that syncs across multiple platforms. I don't need a magazine style layout. I learned to read. I don't need pictures. And I don't need some social community to validate my reading choices.
Rain from the cloud (Score:5, Insightful)
This kind of thing is one of the reasons I made that Marge Simpson murmur when my last company's head of IT declared that we were Googleizing. Part of Google's pitch is to list the huge number of apps and tools they have available. Trouble is, you can deeply integrate those apps into your company's procedures, then Google decides to clean house and discontinue something that's become critical to your company and there's not a damn thing you can do about it.
Re:Here we go again (Score:5, Insightful)
What do you want them to do, anyway? Swear a blood-oath that once they start up a service, they will continue with it forever?
If they don't think it makes sense to commit the resources to maintain it, then it's certainly not going to make sense to maintain a paid version - not everything is about revenue.
You act like this is some kind of galling defect in Google's collective moral fibre - some things don't stick, it happens.
Oh, statistics... (Score:4, Insightful)
So usage is declining. But who continues to use Google Reader? Everyone who leads the social web, as evident by this story exploding everywhere. Google retiring Reader got more press than any Google innovation got in years.
Maybe Google should use the statistics of attention and rage rather than usage for deciding this one.
Re:Alternatives? (Score:5, Insightful)
Yeah, I hate companies that let me use something for free and then drop it.
With 3 months notice.
And directions for how to get your data out.
What a bunch of jerks.
The outrage (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:Alternatives? (Score:4, Insightful)
Yes they were. I have closed my g+ account last week, and suddenly picasa became much more pleasant to use.
Re:WTF Google (Score:4, Insightful)
No, based on events surrounding their last couple "retirements", it's pretty obvious they're attempting to force people to start using Google+ by retiring most stuff that's external to that product.
Wouldn't that require that google+ at least had half of the features of the products they kill?
Re:Petition (Score:5, Insightful)
"We originally intended to include RSS support by default as a native feature of Google Chrome (and we still might in the future) but we decided instead to implement this as an extension. This decision was made based on our philosophy of trying to limit ourselves to adding only the UI features that a vast majority of users need and allow each user to customize the browsers to fit their needs with Extensions. Given that most people are not familiar with and don't consume RSS feeds, we thought that RSS support would be a better fit as an extension, at least to begin with."
http://www.kunocreative.com/blog/bid/71409/Google-Chrome-s-RSS-Support-Problem-and-How-To-Fix-It-sort-of [kunocreative.com]
So there you go folks, Google have decided RSS is dead.
Kind of fair point, I guarantee the only people I know who know what an RSS feed is are the developers sitting in this room with me.
Not a single member-of-the-80%-public I ask will know what an RSS feed it or how to subscribe to one.
Then know how to Like thinks on Facebook.
That's it.
Of course if it had had decent support hard wired in to Android/Chrome then people would be using them, albeit without technical knowledge of what they were doing I think.
Clumsy move (Score:4, Insightful)