Closure Of Google Reader Prompts Web Storm

[webfact]

Closure of Google Reader prompts web storm

SAN FRANCISCO: -- A decision by Google to close its popular Reader, which allowed users to easily follow updates from around the web, has sparked a storm of criticism by devoted fans of the service.

Google announced the move late Wednesday as part of a"spring-cleaning" strategy pushed by founder and chief executive Larry Page to cull non-essential projects at the web software giant.

The company announced a shake up of its top ranks Wednesday with Android chief Andy Rubin stepping aside in favour of Sundar Pichai, boss of the company’s Chrome browser and operating system. Google broke up its mapping and commerce unit, with executive Jeff Hubermoving to research division Google X, which is working on projects like Google Glass and the company’s self-driving cars.

Urs Holze, senior vice president of technical infrastructure, said the decision was made to close down Google Reader because it had been steadily losing users over the years as people switched to Facebook and Twitter to keep track of web updates.

"It’s been a long time since we have had this rate of change - it probably hasn’t happened since the birth of personal computing 40 years ago," he wrote.

"To make the most of these opportunities, we need to focus - otherwise we spread ourselves too thin and lack impact." Within hours of the announcement, online petitions calling on Google to reverse the decision had attracted thousands of signatures, including one on online petition site that had been signed by morethan 63,000 people by midday Thursday.


-- The Nation 2013-03-15

[Locationthailand]

You would think Reader is an essential. I guess 63,000 people also thought so.

[JetsetBkk]

You would think Reader is an essential. I guess 63,000 people also thought so.

Yes but "popular Reader" is a bit of a stretch...

[wilcopops]

So maybe some enterprising chap will fill the gap?

[BlackPuddingBertha]

I dont even know what it is so I doubt I'll miss it much.

[bobl]

You would think Reader is an essential. I guess 63,000 people also thought so.

Yes but "popular Reader" is a bit of a stretch...

Ummm... that was 63,000 within the first day after the announcement, so 'popular' not such a stretch...

Even Hitler used it!

www.youtube.com/watch?v=A25VgNZDQ08

[JetsetBkk]

You would think Reader is an essential. I guess 63,000 people also thought so.

Yes but "popular Reader" is a bit of a stretch...

Ummm... that was 63,000 within the first day after the announcement, so 'popular' not such a stretch...

Even Hitler used it!

www.youtube.com/watch?v=A25VgNZDQ08

Don't worry. He can export all his feeds as an XML.

Brilliant!

[Chicog]

Lots of apps and web-based aggregators use it, so the real howling will start in July.

They've already pulled the app from the Play Store unless you already have it installed.

[USNret]

You would think Reader is an essential. I guess 63,000 people also thought so.

Yes but "popular Reader" is a bit of a stretch...

Agreed! I'm something of a techie geek & I never even heard of it.

[Somnambulist]

I don't know what it is either but I just read somewhere that with Google Reader users were not visiting the websites where the content originated. Since those websites use google ads, which generate money for Google, Google Reader had to go.

[USNret]

I don't know what it is either but I just read somewhere that with Google Reader users were not visiting the websites where the content originated. Since those websites use google ads, which generate money for Google, Google Reader had to go.

Sounds more viable than their "spring cleaning" mumbo jumbo.

[Chicog]

You would think Reader is an essential. I guess 63,000 people also thought so.

Yes but "popular Reader" is a bit of a stretch...

Agreed! I'm something of a techie geek & I never even heard of it.

Seriously? You know what RSS is right?

[JetsetBkk]

You would think Reader is an essential. I guess 63,000 people also thought so.

Yes but "popular Reader" is a bit of a stretch...

Agreed! I'm something of a techie geek & I never even heard of it.

Seriously? You know what RSS is right?

I'll put my hand up, too. I've never heard of the Google Reader either.

I use RSS on torrent sites and an RSS scanner plugin to filter the RSS feed to get just the torrents I want. But whenever I've used RSS feeds in browsers to get, for example, news stories I found there was simply too much info coming down on the feed. So I ended up just visiting the sites to read the top stories.

Edited March 16, 2013 by JetsetBkk

[BlackPuddingBertha]

So I ended up just visiting the sites to read the top stories.

Precisely what I do. The last thing I want is tons of pointless dross being pushed at me. So Twitter, Facebook, RSS etc are all out of the door as far as I'm concerned.

[Chicog]

Which is why a lot of people use Google Reader funnily enough.....

[bobl]

Fwiw, Feedly picked up 500,000 new users within 2 days of Google's announcement.

[Chicog]

Fwiw, Feedly picked up 500,000 new users within 2 days of Google's announcement.

Which is a tad amusing considering they use Google Reader as the underlying technology.

They have promised that it will still work when Reader shuts down though.