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Google Reader shut down announced ten years ago today

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Re: Google Reader shut down announced ten years ago today

#31

Post by srcreigh »

plorkyeran wrote: post #29
yjftsjthsd-h wrote: post #10

I feel like killing Reader was the point at which I switched from viewing Google mostly positively to more skeptically. Which doesn't seem terribly rational, really; it wasn't the first product to be axed, it was perfectly possible to replace... Maybe it was just the first product axing that really affected me? The moment Google went from "provider of great free stuff" to "sometimes provider of free stuff, sometimes…

I think it was the first thing they'd killed which had been around for quite a while, still had devoted users, and Google didn't offer a replacement. If you look at the graveyard, the pre-Reader things they killed were things which had flopped (e.g. Buzz), things which were no longer relevant (e.g Gears), acquisitions, and mergers where they had two redundant products (e.g. Google Video).

I wasn’t reader user, but it seems to me like when advertising self interest took over

Re: Google Reader shut down announced ten years ago today

#32

Post by dmix »

chunkyks wrote: post #9

I switched to feedly. No biggie, in retrospect. But, that was the first Google product where it really hit home, to me, how even if a product is fantastic and useful, Google will kill it without a second thought. It fundamentally changed my attitude toward Google and made me far more deliberate about what services I choose to rely on, especially from the big G. Obligatory link to https://killedbygoogle.com/

I'm curious if Clayton Christensen's would add some exceptions to his follow up book to "The Innovator's Dilemma" [1] ("The Innovators Solution") where the solution to BigCo failing to innovate is because they can never comprehend/tolerate any business which might cannibalize their core business even in the slightest (like a niche RSS reader taking away views from Google News and Google SERPs) is to do "intrapeanuership". Which is where your side plays are isolated/insulated from the downward pressure of established powerful internal teams controlling the current pet business model.

I doubt Reader was ever going to be a serious business but maybe there should be a much more explicit execption for the side products your customers love that also don't fit perfectly into the parent companies main business/product dev strategy.

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Innovator's_Dilemma?wprov=...

Re: Google Reader shut down announced ten years ago today

#34

Post by ramraj07 »

dewey wrote: post #14
ramraj07 wrote: post #7

I literally stopped reading literature the same way after that. With GReader I used to consume the ToC of 15-30 journals without missing a single abstract. I just gave up on reading that way after that, no other tool came close.

Which part of Google Reader was the one that no other tools came close to? There's almost as many good and different RSS reader clients as Todo list apps, so this somehow seems like seen through rose-tinted glasses.

I gave the entire gamut a chance back then, none was the same. They either cost a lot, didn’t offer the same UX or both. The fact that we are celebrating its anniversary today shows how irreplaceable it was so not sure if I’m the one wearing rose tinted glasses or if it’s the other way around where folks can’t acknowledge the magic some products capture that’s not easy to put in words.

Re: Google Reader shut down announced ten years ago today

#38

Post by giuliomagnifico »

I think now it's better for us, because we discovered self-hosting RSS platforms, and other ways to use the RSS, but Google has missed a business opportunity to make some money, for example offer only 100 feeds to free plans and illimitate feeds to who bought Google One, or a cheap illimitated plan like $2-3/month. Indeed I'm paying Feedbin for the (great) service ($4,5/month)

Re: Google Reader shut down announced ten years ago today

#39

Post by jochem9 »

dmix wrote: post #25
yjftsjthsd-h wrote: post #10

I feel like killing Reader was the point at which I switched from viewing Google mostly positively to more skeptically. Which doesn't seem terribly rational, really; it wasn't the first product to be axed, it was perfectly possible to replace... Maybe it was just the first product axing that really affected me? The moment Google went from "provider of great free stuff" to "sometimes provider of free stuff, sometimes…

It also coincided with a persistent trend of HN itself no longer featuring random blog posts heavily but rather a) mostly popular news sites like NYTimes that finally started understanding the web demanded clickbait/Twitter-friendly high volume articles (where no one reads the article but shares the headline) and b) blogs that went viral via Twitter/FB/etc. That was the new reality a decade ago. Social media apps was…

Speak for yourself, I'm still heavily using RSS. I stumbled upon this thread via RSS.
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