Google Reader shut down news causes online backlash

The lack of comments here probably indicates Google Reader's current popularity. Shame really, I use it everyday, it's the most useful information gathering tool I know of.
 
I use Google Reader every day. Google's treatment of Reader has been completely atrocious from beginning to end. They toyed around with RSS, killed the entire market and shut down innovation in that area, then cut it off when it didn't fit their plan.
 
Google Reader is my damn homepage! Use it everyday of my life.
Sad to see it go, even sadder to see the sub-par replacements out there.
 
Moklet Kcuf said:
The lack of comments here probably indicates Google Reader's current popularity. Shame really, I use it everyday, it's the most useful information gathering tool I know of.
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What do you mean? In this thread? Thing is, this story hit last week already, and there were like 3 threads on here going. Guess you missed it ;-)

Either way, thing is Google Reader became a very "power user" feature. So the Facebook/Twitter casual crowds have no idea how inefficient their way of reading content really is, compared to RSS/Google Reader feeds.

I've used Google Reader for ages, hooked it up to all these "magazine readers" as source of content, which worked great.

Google is definitely pushing people to G+, which is less efficient for "power users" and more open to spam you with advertisements (same with Facebook's newsfeed). Google had no control over RSS feeds and couldn't inject ads inbetween, hence i suppose they want to kill it.

Fortunately RSS is a global standard, not a Google thing. So somewhere, someone is going to replace Google Reader as the defactor Cloud RSS Feed reader.

The sad part is, Google did not bother to build RSS into G+ or somewhere else , if they did this, this thing would have been a non-issue. Instead they kill the entire RSS customer base now. RSS users are not going to go G+ because you can't read RSS feeds there! So they are forced to leave Google's platform entirely!

Feedly seems to be first to pick up the pieces, so it would be interesting to see if Feedly "mysteriously" rise to big heights or get bought out... that will prove the popularity of RSS .

daveza said:
This was something Google offered free of charge right ?
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Yes, so people probably can't complain, however this does makes ALL Google services suddenly something that can be taken away at Google's whim. Gmail is free too, G+ , Picasa , Google Docs . If people suddenly feel these tools can dissappear, they are much less likely to become reliant on them and not dig in at all, in fact even myself have been "forced" off alot of Google's tools (iGoogle and Google Reader) and it does become tiresome . So i'm less prone to try and use all google's services now, and will simply pick whatever is the best instead (regardless of their integration).

If we look at what happened to Google Buzz and Wave, now they want us to move everything into G+ ? Yea right. Sorry Google, i'll stick to RSS.
 
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cerebus said:
How would you feel if they shut down Gmail tomorrow?
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I would be extremely pissed if they did it tomorrow but that would hardly be the way they would do it.

I guess it's the same with FB - if they decided to charge for using it there would be an outcry as well but I just don't see how one can throw all the toys out when something offered free of charge is withdrawn.
 
daveza said:
I would be extremely pissed if they did it tomorrow but that would hardly be the way they would do it.

I guess it's the same with FB - if they decided to charge for using it there would be an outcry as well but I just don't see how one can throw all the toys out when something offered free of charge is withdrawn.
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It's not the fact that they are shutting down something which was free. It's the tactic they took in their whole approach with the Google Reader product. Initially RSS was a pretty vibrant area of web development and there were a number of strong competitive products out there. Then Google did what Google does, and stepped in to offer it for free and obliterated anybody else who wanted to charge for content aggregation. Then x number of years down the line, after having done nothing whatsoever to develop the product (even so, it continues to be used by me and others devotedly), they decide it's nonviable for them and shut it down. Apparently they were never even sure in the first place if they wanted to use Google Reader and it's always been in limbo but they never bothered to let anyone know.
 
I'm genuinely surprised by the blow-back of this decision by Google. I've moved on to Twitter long ago and it's not true to say Twitter is inefficient (Diabolus) as there are some really good apps out there to manage Twitter feeds (I use TweetCaster to filter, zip, etc). To try to see if I missed something (due to all the noise) I tried Reader this morning again and I just cannot see why people aren't using Twitter instead.
 
BeVonk! said:
I'm genuinely surprised by the blow-back of this decision by Google. I've moved on to Twitter long ago and it's not true to say Twitter is inefficient (Diabolus) as there are some really good apps out there to manage Twitter feeds (I use TweetCaster to filter, zip, etc). To try to see if I missed something (due to all the noise) I tried Reader this morning again and I just cannot see why people aren't using Twitter instead.
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People suddenly seem to go to Google Reader and think "is this it?" . The Google Reader website is NOT what people are moaning about. It's the API. Alot of RSS users don't ever go to Google Reader, they only manage their feeds there. They slot their entire list of subscriptions into OTHER apps . These other apps can turn the RSS feeds into Magazines or Twitter like content.

The fact that Twitter users need all kinds of extra tools to get an RSS like experience, says it all.


Just a few things on this RSS vs Twitter thing.

Bear in mind, Twitter has a word limit. RSS doesn't. RSS tends to come directly from the source, Twitter your content comes via "middlemen". Some RSS contains the entire article, some only headlines (up to the source). You can view it like Twitter or you can view it with all the photos/text, your choice.

Twitter is good for "right now" , but over a longer timeline it sucks. RSS works like an email inbox, it has unread counts and it can date this back to the beginning of time. So if someone writes a blog entry once a month, and i only get to it 2 weeks later, i can with RSS . On Twitter, good luck to you. On RSS i can easily see that particular blog has "unread" entries.

Twitter combines alot of comments and dialog which may or may not be conducive to the topics or things you are trying to read. It will flood your timeline with noise. Twitter is also alot more "personal" . Where RSS does not have that connect.

Now, some may say the whole unread/structure of RSS is exactly why they prefer Twitter (i.e if you miss a Tweet, it's gone, and you don't care) . Either way, i don't think Twitter is a real replacement for RSS feeds, especially if there's feeds that you MUST read and follow over a longer period of time.

Everyone seems to think RSS is just like news feeds from News24 or CNN or something that just gets pushed out every 5 minutes . It can easily be a change log on Sharepoint, it can be a new Podcast or a new Blog posting, things that happen sporadically or irregularly.

I also think alot of more old-school users still prefer RSS , it's just much more structured, but also require a little more tech savvy to use. Hence, Twitter got the entire Facebook generation on it, totally oblivious of what RSS is.
 
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diabolus said:
People suddenly seem to go to Google Reader and think "is this it?" . The Google Reader website is NOT what people are moaning about. It's the API. Alot of RSS users don't ever go to Google Reader, they only manage their feeds there. They slot their entire list of subscriptions into OTHER apps . These other apps can turn the RSS feeds into Magazines or Twitter like content.

The fact that Twitter users need all kinds of extra tools to get an RSS like experience, says it all.


Just a few things on this RSS vs Twitter thing.

Bear in mind, Twitter has a word limit. RSS doesn't. RSS tends to come directly from the source, Twitter your content comes via "middlemen". Some RSS contains the entire article, some only headlines (up to the source). You can view it like Twitter or you can view it with all the photos/text, your choice.

Twitter is good for "right now" , but over a longer timeline it sucks. RSS works like an email inbox, it has unread counts and it can date this back to the beginning of time. So if someone writes a blog entry once a month, and i only get to it 2 weeks later, i can with RSS . On Twitter, good luck to you. On RSS i can easily see that particular blog has "unread" entries.

Twitter combines alot of comments and dialog which may or may not be conducive to the topics or things you are trying to read. It will flood your timeline with noise. Twitter is also alot more "personal" . Where RSS does not have that connect.

Now, some may say the whole unread/structure of RSS is exactly why they prefer Twitter (i.e if you miss a Tweet, it's gone, and you don't care) . Either way, i don't think Twitter is a real replacement for RSS feeds, especially if there's feeds that you MUST read and follow over a longer period of time.

Everyone seems to think RSS is just like news feeds from News24 or CNN or something that just gets pushed out every 5 minutes . It can easily be a change log on Sharepoint, it can be a new Podcast or a new Blog posting, things that happen sporadically or irregularly.

I also think alot of more old-school users still prefer RSS , it's just much more structured, but also require a little more tech savvy to use. Hence, Twitter got the entire Facebook generation on it, totally oblivious of what RSS is.
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+1
 
Twitter is good for pithy aphorisms and breaking news, lousy for intense levels of article feeds of varying categories.
 
Jeepers, are you guys not familiar with Twitter? I get headlines with links to the full articles and I can then choose what to read and what not to read (shortened link directed to browser). The character limit means nothing. All I want is a headline and link to more. The idea is not to put all the info in a tweet.

The fact that Twitter is "more personal" gives me the ability to communicate with the author of the tweet, and I've build some very valuable contacts that way, connections that then feeds me exclusive info through other coms mediums. The two-way coms is fantastic.
 
So here's my question... If you're using your Google Reader account to aggregate feeds for Reeder or Flipboard, is there a replacement out there?
 
BeVonk! said:
Jeepers, are you guys not familiar with Twitter? I get headlines with links to the full articles and I can then choose what to read and what not to read (shortened link directed to browser). The character limit means nothing. All I want is a headline and link to more. The idea is not to put all the info in a tweet.
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I get that... I don't really want just a headline link. I really want enough of a summary of the contents of the article that I only have to clickthrough at the barest minimum while still generally getting the information I want. If I had to clickthrough every tidbit of news nugget that caught my eye I'd be killing my work bandwidth allowance which I already do if truth be told, not to mention the toll on my productivity. Also I get Carbonite and Gumtree feeds on there for certain relevant categories and I wouldn't get that on Twitter.

The fact that Twitter is "more personal" gives me the ability to communicate with the author of the tweet, and I've build some very valuable contacts that way, connections that then feeds me exclusive info through other coms mediums. The two-way coms is fantastic.
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I only want one-way comms, thanks. I'm a black hole of information.

So here's my question... If you're using your Google Reader account to aggregate feeds for Reeder or Flipboard, is there a replacement out there?
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Not yet :(. Feedly is promising to replace the engine though.
 
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