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RIP Google Reader

ripgooglereader.com

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Re: RIP Google Reader

#81

Post by jolux »

OskarS wrote: post #45
cletus wrote: post #11

Whatever was said at the time, I’m convinced Google Reader was collateral damage from the Bay of Pigs Google Plus effort. It had social features (which I honestly never used) and anything social had to be G+. Still, I honestly don’t understand why this is the hill people want to die on, what they feel most betrayed about. Like I haven’t seen some people this upset since Firefly was canceled.

The social features were actually killed off before the product itself: a few years earlier they did a redesign which removed all of the social features. The social features were cool, I remember following a couple of journalists i really like who commented on the articles and discussed it with each other, it was a really nice thing. The reason people are so bitter is that Google Reader was the kind of thing that if…

Twitter still supports the chronological timeline. It's no Google Reader, but I refuse to submit to The Algorithm.

Re: RIP Google Reader

#82

Post by tommoor »

Going to take this opportunity to tell everyone that NetNewsWire has gotten really good – it's free, looks great on Big Sur, syncs via iCloud, I can't recommend it enough.

Re: RIP Google Reader

#83

Post by perryizgr8 »

basch wrote: post #61
cletus wrote: post #11

Whatever was said at the time, I’m convinced Google Reader was collateral damage from the Bay of Pigs Google Plus effort. It had social features (which I honestly never used) and anything social had to be G+. Still, I honestly don’t understand why this is the hill people want to die on, what they feel most betrayed about. Like I haven’t seen some people this upset since Firefly was canceled.

Unpopular retrospective opinion, but given how stagnant Reader was before its death, the boon of Reader Replacements to arrive on the scene after its demise was worth its disappearance. The race to be the replacement made a metric ton of competing products better.

> how stagnant Reader was before its death

That's a feature, not a bug. It was close to perfect, no pointless UI re-designs required. Fast, lightweight, no bs.

Re: RIP Google Reader

#84

Post by criddell »

davidhariri wrote: post #13

RIP Reader. I use Feedly + NetNewsWire. Great combo.

I use NetNewsWire on my iPad and it's outstanding. Totally free (no ads) and open source (MIT). Brent Simmons is the project lead and he has a long history with RSS and clearly loves it.

Re: RIP Google Reader

#85

Post by kepano »

A few folks here are asking why old timers still mourn Google Reader when there are so many good alternatives available now. I agree, there are. It even opened the door for many more tools in the space. I love using Feedly, Reeder, and NetNewsWire.

But to me the sadness comes from seeing the open web continue to fray. At the time Google felt like an important part of the open web, and RSS was part of the glue that held it together. Discontinuing Google Reader felt like an admission that Google did not stand for those values anymore.

Re: RIP Google Reader

#86

Post by benhurmarcel »

jaywalk wrote: post #76
dbrereton wrote: post #58

As someone who was born too late for Google Reader, I genuinely don't understand why people bring it up every 5 minutes. There are 1000 feed reader apps that exist right now, some of which have the branding of "it's just like Google Reader", so what am I missing here?

You're missing the pain that we had to go through to find something comparable. I'm sure you know the meme that any new Google product that's launched is basically on borrowed time, because it'll get cancelled soon enough. Well, Reader was the first one to get that treatment.

I remember when Reader was shut down, very rapidly alternatives were coming up. Lots of people switched to Feedly within a few weeks, and The Old Reader came up, etc. The transition really wasn't that bad.

Re: RIP Google Reader

#90

Post by perardi »

dbrereton wrote: post #58

As someone who was born too late for Google Reader, I genuinely don't understand why people bring it up every 5 minutes. There are 1000 feed reader apps that exist right now, some of which have the branding of "it's just like Google Reader", so what am I missing here?

1. Way to make me feel old.

2. It was, by far, the dominant reader. Nobody other big corporation† decided to make a top-level project that surfaced feed reading like this. So people remember it fondly, because it was the heyday of RSS, before Twitter and Facebook took over news delivery.

†OK, fine, I think Apple did a thing where you could read RSS feeds in Mail.

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