Google Reader is Dead

Elki

Reader Team, 2007.



Now what? Instapaper's Marco Arment.

Google Reader is a convenient way to sync between our RSS clients today, but back when it was launched in 2005 (before iPhones), it destroyed the market for desktop RSS clients. Client innovation completely stopped for a few years until iOS made it a market again — but every major iOS RSS client is still dependent on Google Reader for feed crawling and sync.

Now, we’ll be forced to fill the hole that Reader will leave behind, and there’s no immediately obvious alternative. We’re finally likely to see substantial innovation and competition in RSS desktop apps and sync platforms for the first time in almost a decade.

It may suck in the interim before great alternatives mature and become widely supported, but in the long run, trust me: this is excellent news.

I open with some quasi-rosiness because I need it.

Lifehacker has a roundup of alternatives.

http://lifehacker.com/5990456/google-reader-is-getting-shut-down-here-are-the-best-alternatives

Ars is running a poll of its readers, and Feedly is emerging as a non-consensus leader.

http://arstechnica.com/business/2013/03/poll-technica-where-should-we-go-when-google-reader-is-put-out-to-pasture/

Speaking of Feedly.

Google announced today that they will be shutting down Google Reader. This is something we have been expecting for some time: We have been working on a project called Normandy which is a feedly clone of the Google Reader API – running on Google App Engine. When Google Reader shuts down, feedly will seamlessly transition to the Normandy back end. So if you are a Google Reader user and using feedly, you are covered: the transition will be seamless.

http://blog.feedly.com/2013/03/14/google-reader/

And Flipboard says something similar.

http://inside.flipboard.com/2013/03/14/weve-got-your-rss-covered-save-your-google-reader-feeds-now/



In my perfect world Google Reader is open-sourced, and emerges from the ashes a leaner, meaner, open & super nasty RSS aggregator from hell. Broadly speaking, I have no interest in social news reading, or looking at what's hot as a primary news/reading mode. It is supplementary. There are things I want to read, and I want to to read the things I want to read. And mobile apps are great, but what has made the app space so competitive is the platform agnostic nature of Google Reader. I could use Newsify one day, and then switch to Reeder and my feed will just be the same. I would hate to lose that, but here we are.

So, uh, goddammit Google.

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Behemoth

This is very annoying. I switched over to Feedly for now, in the hopes that their solution works out. It's actually pretty nice, I should have switched earlier, hopefully they can successfully recreate the reader API for their back end by July.

I love using RSS feeds. I don't want a bunch of social crap when I'm just reading the same sites I read every day. It's such a simple concept, I'm shocked that it's apparently not popular enough for Google to keep running. I guess it's good that some smaller companies which can survive on fewer users are taking the reins, they can actually continue development rather than leaving it to rot.

Tomanta

I always have 3 tabs open in a web browser. Gmail, Google Reader, and the PA Forums.

This makes me very, very sad. I tried several RSS readers before Google's and the big G's was so much better I never even thought about looking for a replacement. I guess since that was several years ago and Google has shown how to do it I can find a decent replacement now.

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Mike Danger

I've heard good things about Newsblur but their site is getting hammered right now.

Durkhanus

I had seen the term RSS used before, but, until now, never had the inclination to look it up & find out what it is.

Having done so, I don't see this event as having much of an impact on my internet use.

Tomanta

Durkhanus wrote: »

I had seen the term RSS used before, but, until now, never had the inclination to look it up & find out what it is.

Having done so, I don't see this event as having much of an impact on my internet use.

RSS/Google Reader lets me catch up on new posts from 73 different places in about 3 minutes. It's one of the best things about the Internet.

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Loren Michael

Reader has been a constant frustration for me since the Plussed it all to hell.

I'm happy to see it go. I'd love to see some competition and choice.

AngelHedgie

Loren Michael wrote: »

Reader has been a constant frustration for me since the Plussed it all to hell.

I'm happy to see it go. I'd love to see some competition and choice.

Reader pretty much destroyed the RSS feed reader market. Maybe now we'll see some vitality.

Dynagrip

Reader is pretty much 95% of my Internet time

Snork

i see how this can ultimately be a good thing long-term for the consumer what with new competition and all (I really like feedly), but what reasoning could google have to shut it down if it's so widely loved?

AngelHedgie

Balloon Juice has a pretty good piece on what happened with Reader.

The closing makes a good point:

Monopoly control by a benevolent dictator was never good for the RSS market, and in a year or so I expect that the RSS reader I’m using will be better in many ways than what Reader is today, because it will be maintained by a few people who are passionate about creating the best RSS reader around, rather than a big company that stopped giving a shit about RSS long ago.

AngelHedgie

Snork wrote: »

i see how this can ultimately be a good thing long-term for the consumer what with new competition and all (I really like feedly), but what reasoning could google have to shut it down if it's so widely loved?

It's a cost center. And while Reader is popular, it also has fucked up the dynamics of the RSS reader market. It's actually a good illustration of the issues with how the Internet amplifies monopoly power.

Madpanda

Feedly seems fine enough for me, once I found the list view option. Will have to see how the android app is. I've been using rss in one client or another since its inception and its good to see such a following for reader/rss. Having to move to some socialized web 5.0 crap app would suck.

SyphonBlue

spacekungfuman wrote: »

I can't believe this. It seems to be the leader in RSS feeders. Why shut it down?

Edit: Am I the only one that feels like Google is starting to lose some of its luster? Between google+ and the whole privacy debacle worth the thing they tried before google+, android, chrome os, how terrible youtube performs and now this decision, I am feeling less and less connected to their infrastructure. I really just use search, chrome, gmail and reader now and most of my non-pa web time is spent in reader.

yeah having the most popular mobile OS must really suck

Darkewolfe

I sometimes wonder if I'm now an old man who doesn't understand the internet, because I've never seen sufficient value in an RSS feed to figure out how to set one up for myself.

OSUJumpMan

Does this mean anything for Google Listen? I know there's some interaction between that and Reader, but I don't know to what extent.

Echo

It was inevitable.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=A25VgNZDQ08

Elki

Darkewolfe wrote: »

I sometimes wonder if I'm now an old man who doesn't understand the internet, because I've never seen sufficient value in an RSS feed to figure out how to set one up for myself.

It has a lot to do with how much you try to keep up with. At some point you either have to cut down on your bookmarking, skim more when you go to your sites, or find an efficient way to check for updates.

Organichu

i don't even know what an rss feed is

pirateluigi

I appreciate all the potential good that can come out of it, but damn I wish they gave us more than 3 months notice. I got over a year warning that iGoogle was going away and no one uses that!

Dynagrip

pirateluigi wrote: »

I appreciate all the potential good that can come out of it, but damn I wish they gave us more than 3 months notice. I got over a year warning that iGoogle was going away and no one uses that!

I was going through my list of starred stuff that I hadn't gotten around to reading but it looks like a lot of it is now dated political stuff

Elki

Dynagrip wrote: »

pirateluigi wrote: »

I appreciate all the potential good that can come out of it, but damn I wish they gave us more than 3 months notice. I got over a year warning that iGoogle was going away and no one uses that!

I was going through my list of starred stuff that I hadn't gotten around to reading but it looks like a lot of it is now dated political stuff

That happened to me two hour ago. I went through the item on my "later" tag for a bit, and then just deleted it. I haven't been using that tag for a while because I started sending those articles to Pocket, since it's a much better reading experience.

Echo

Elki wrote: »

That happened to me two hour ago. I went through the item on my "later" tag for a bit, and then just deleted it. I haven't been using that tag for a while because I started sending those articles to Pocket, since it's a much better reading experience.

Yeah, I've been using stars in Reader as a task for IFTT which adds that link to Pinboard, where I read and tag it up later.

Silas Brown

Jesus, there is a whole level to this RSS reading stuff I didn't know about, I guess. I always just subscribed to whatever in Google Reader, then starred anything I liked that I wanted to reference later.

MadCaddy

Elki wrote: »

Dynagrip wrote: »

pirateluigi wrote: »

I appreciate all the potential good that can come out of it, but damn I wish they gave us more than 3 months notice. I got over a year warning that iGoogle was going away and no one uses that!

I was going through my list of starred stuff that I hadn't gotten around to reading but it looks like a lot of it is now dated political stuff

That happened to me two hour ago. I went through the item on my "later" tag for a bit, and then just deleted it. I haven't been using that tag for a while because I started sending those articles to Pocket, since it's a much better reading experience.

And people wonder why there's a distorting effect with the way social media/blogs work.. A little spring cleaning of your own site list couldn't be a bad thing for most people. Maybe this is like an initiative by google to make people think!!

Nan they're just wanting to privatize and patent whatever they figure out that's innovative with a different model..

Mike Danger

I had totally forgotten about the starred items thing. I went and checked and just found a long piece from 4thletter that I had meant to read and forgot about.

Echo, have you thought about just using Instapaper?

Elki

Echo wrote: »

Elki wrote: »

That happened to me two hour ago. I went through the item on my "later" tag for a bit, and then just deleted it. I haven't been using that tag for a while because I started sending those articles to Pocket, since it's a much better reading experience.

Yeah, I've been using stars in Reader as a task for IFTT which adds that link to Pinboard, where I read and tag it up later.

I did an IFTT script that sent starred Reader items to Pocket, and then Pocket integration started showing up everywhere so I don't really need the script anymore.

Robos A Go Go

Do any of these RSS alternatives have the pseudo-social networking share feature that Google Reader used to have?

Echo

Mike Danger wrote: »

I had totally forgotten about the starred items thing. I went and checked and just found a long piece from 4thletter that I had meant to read and forgot about.

Echo, have you thought about just using Instapaper?

Instapaper is for reading shit on my iPhone.

Pinboard is for things I want to save. It's what I use instead of bookmarks.

Echo

Robos A Go Go wrote: »

Do any of these RSS alternatives have the pseudo-social networking share feature that Google Reader used to have?

The Old Reader supposedly has.

When Google removed that from Reader, I stopped using Reader as much as I did before that. I like sharing things I find interesting.

bowen

spacekungfuman wrote: »

I can't believe this. It seems to be the leader in RSS feeders. Why shut it down?

Edit: Am I the only one that feels like Google is starting to lose some of its luster? Between google+ and the whole privacy debacle worth the thing they tried before google+, android, chrome os, how terrible youtube performs and now this decision, I am feeling less and less connected to their infrastructure. I really just use search, chrome, gmail and reader now and most of my non-pa web time is spent in reader.

They also just took adblock pluss off chrome's app store.

bowen

electricitylikesme wrote: »

I use feed2imap. Someone should make that like, a website so it's easy to use.

I've never understood how RSS is not dealt with as just a special folder in my mail account.

Thunderbird should be able to do this.

Echo

bowen wrote: »

electricitylikesme wrote: »

I use feed2imap. Someone should make that like, a website so it's easy to use.

I've never understood how RSS is not dealt with as just a special folder in my mail account.

Thunderbird should be able to do this.

Mail.app in OS X too. (Or so I think, I don't use it.)

Echo

bowen wrote: »

They also just took adblock pluss off chrome's app store.

But hey, they're still open! (For given definitions of "open")

Echo

Okay, that wasn't as ominous as it looked. Adblock isn't an "app", which is the default filter for search results in the Chrome store now. There's a tab for extensions.

syndalis

Echo wrote: »

Okay, that wasn't as ominous as it looked. Adblock isn't an "app", which is the default filter for search results in the Chrome store now. There's a tab for extensions.

That said, today they took all apps off the Android Play store that have anything to do with blocking ads. If you want to block ads, you need to get familiar with either rooting or sideloading, depending on your device.

Echo

Ben Brooks says stuff

Free is fickle, free is fragile, and now tons of users and developers are paying the price for relying on a free service.

...

Google has built a cult-like following around the idea that you can use what they provide for free. Now Google is telling us that if the following isn’t great enough, or the project not lucrative enough, they’ll abandon it and consider it a favor to you if they give you a three month heads up.

...

The why is that Google doesn’t want to make anyone spend cash for their services (there are exceptions to this). So if faced with charging for Reader or shutting down Reader, shutting down Reader fits the Google mantra better than the former.

That’s scary to think about.

Elki

http://thenextweb.com/apps/2013/03/14/digg-announces-plan-to-build-an-rss-reader-with-the-best-of-google-readers-features-including-its-api/