Thursday, March 14, 2013

Google Reader being Terminated

Google to kill off Google Reader in 'spring cleaning' | ZDNet

Google has announced that it will kill off its RSS reader application Google Reader as of July 1, 2013, citing a slowdown in usage since the service launched in 2005.

Users and developers interested in RSS alternatives can export their data, including their subscriptions, with Google Takeout over the course of the next four months.

I guess this could also be an opportunity for ambitious startups,
or for example for Microsoft Azure or Bing, or even Amazon.

Google is "numbers driven" company, so while a useful service for "geeks", Reader was likely found to be less profitable
With no adds, how it could be? They didn't even try...
Anyway, have to figure out what alternative service to move to... or create...

Top free alternatives to soon-to-be shuttered Google Reader


  • Feedly.com: Chrome App, Android App, maybe API clone of Google Reader API.
    Not a web based reader, so this is not it.

  • theoldreader.com created when Google started removing features from Google Reader... it may work, but it may not be fast enough ("There are 16406 users in the import queue ahead of you...")

  • netvibes.com

Interesting:
Yahoo CEO Marissa Mayer was the person to give Google Reader the go-ahead to launch as part of Google Labs. When it became a stand-alone product, the blog post announcing its launch was written by Kevin Systrom, who would go on to start Instagram.

Did Google just kill RSS?
RSS has been dying for years — that’s why Google killed Reader. It was a lovely open format; it has sadly been replaced with proprietary feeds like the ones we get from Twitter and Facebook. That’s not an improvement, but it is reality. Google, with Reader, was really providing the life-support mechanism for RSS. Once Reader is gone, I fear that RSS won’t last much longer.


Google made a fortune on "open web", and now by trying to compete with proprietary "AOL-like" Facebook, is pushing confusing Google+ platform instead of simple and standard web.
Google+ URLs are a mess, and there are no simple "feeds".
Blogs (like this one) on Google's Blogger/Blogspot are not integrated to Google+. Why?

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