RIP Google Reader • Hacker News Board

Re: RIP Google Reader

#161

Post by hintymad » Thu, Mar 25, 2021, 5:11 PM UTC

vanderZwan wrote: post #30

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.

Because Google Reader was the social network for people who don't like talking about themselves but about things on the web that they find interesting, and nothing since has ever come close to it.

In retrospect, Google Reader could have evolved into a service like tiktok that keeps pushing interesting contents to its subscribers. Of course, it's easier to say that in hindsight.

Re: RIP Google Reader

#162

Post by aksss » Thu, Mar 25, 2021, 5:11 PM UTC

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?

A lot of the attempts to replace Reader aren’t clean enough - they try to present the feed like a magazine layout or do other BS to dress up information, where Google reader was “just the facts”. It feels a lot like this old game that kicked ass for the time, but you realize the magic will never be back again. Google killed it almost certainly because it distracted from other money making opportunities, so a lot of us associate it with a further corruption of the internet in a broad sense - like intentionally making things worse to make money off the bad process. They win, we all lose a little bit.

Re: RIP Google Reader

#163

Post by vishnu_ks » Thu, Mar 25, 2021, 5:12 PM UTC

I have been building an RSS reader for developers called https://diff.blog. It's havily integrated with GitHub. For example, when you sign up, it automatically follows the blog of developers and organizations you are part of. I have been working on it in my spare time during the last 2 years and it has been growing steadily. It has over 1200+ users now. Do give it a try!

Re: RIP Google Reader

#164

Post by JustSomeNobody » Thu, Mar 25, 2021, 5:12 PM UTC

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.

Never understood the draw of Firefly. It's ... okay, but kinda cringey.

Google reader was nice because it was simple and it just worked.

Re: RIP Google Reader

#165

Post by mattmcknight » Thu, Mar 25, 2021, 5:16 PM UTC

misiti3780 wrote: post #87

Does anyone know why google didnt open source it?

Guessing that it was dependent on too many internal services.

Re: RIP Google Reader

#166

Post by geerlingguy » Thu, Mar 25, 2021, 5:17 PM UTC

I think the reason things like this just don't die is we all long for the days (long past) when Google was a leading force in making the web nicer, and having a very positive reputation, from making search a thousand times better than [Yahoo|Ask Jeeves|etc.], making maps amazing (compared to MapQuest/etc.), building a good, free email service (we've since learned the cost of 'free'), and building products everyone knows and loves like Reader.

Re: RIP Google Reader

#167

Post by mattmcknight » Thu, Mar 25, 2021, 5:19 PM UTC

crazygringo wrote: post #149

dpeck wrote: post #114

Those of you who don’t understand why people were attached to Reader: Please keep in mind that it’s generally not the death of the tool that we lament after all these years. It is the destruction of our communities there that we’re still sad about. Imagine your favorite coffee shop, bar, church or social club ceased to be. You’d still see some of the previous members at other places, but the community as it existed i…

Wait, what was the community? I thought it was just an RSS reader. This is the first I've ever heard of a Reader "community". I'm looking it up and it doesn't appear there were forums or anything. What was the community aspect?

It allowed you to share and discuss items with a closed set of friends. It was really good for that.

http://googlereader.blogspot.com/2007/12/reader-and-talk-are...

http://googlereader.blogspot.com/2011/01/more-control-over-c...

Re: RIP Google Reader

#168

Post by myelin » Thu, Mar 25, 2021, 5:19 PM UTC

conesus wrote: post #35

It was in the summer of 2008, three years after Google launched Reader and had at least 5 million users, when I decided to write my own RSS reader. There were just so many features I wanted that I knew Google would never build and for some strange reason I thought I could make money with my own opinionated take on a news reader. Then at 4pm on March 13th, 2013, I got an email from Nilay at The Verge asking if I'd hea…

Another happy NewsBlur customer here; I was part of the mass exodus from Google Reader, and NewsBlur has been an excellent replacement.

Re: RIP Google Reader

#169

Post by tomcooks » Thu, Mar 25, 2021, 5:19 PM UTC

kypro wrote: post #117

vanderZwan wrote: post #30

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Because Google Reader was the social network for people who don't like talking about themselves but about things on the web that they find interesting, and nothing since has ever come close to it.

Isn't this exactly what Reddit is? I wasn't a Google Reader user, but I'd be interesting in understanding what I was missing.

Reddit is hardly a place for people who don't like talking about themselves~

Re: RIP Google Reader

#170

Post by mFixman » Thu, Mar 25, 2021, 5:19 PM UTC

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?

I am old enough to have used Google Reader, and I don't get it either.

My guess is that the death of Google Reader was one of the last domino pieces to fall in the change from the multi-website internet to the Reddit aggregator internet. The replacement apps don't work because the internet model where RSS was useful died a decade ago.

This whole thing might be like the death of a popular BBS client for someone born in the 1980s. But then again... it's been 8 years. It's time to let go.