Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

Google Reader shut down announced ten years ago today

googleblog.blogspot.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

121–130 of 354 posts

Re: Google Reader shut down announced ten years ago today

#121

Post by pydry »

wolpoli wrote: post #58
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 stopped having a positive view of Google due to their poor explanation for shutting down Google Reader. They explained they were shutting it down due to declining usage and they are pouring all of their energy into fewer product, however, as Google had a reputation for building cool and free stuff back then, it seemed reasonable to me that they could have maintain it in a frozen state or provide a longer transition…

When the first rumors of Google+ swirled I figured that Google Reader would be used to seed it.

I really found it baffling that they didn't do that. It felt like they needlessly kneecapped plus's launch.

Re: Google Reader shut down announced ten years ago today

#122

Post by maccard »

pirsquare wrote: post #87
wolpoli wrote: post #58

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I stopped having a positive view of Google due to their poor explanation for shutting down Google Reader. They explained they were shutting it down due to declining usage and they are pouring all of their energy into fewer product, however, as Google had a reputation for building cool and free stuff back then, it seemed reasonable to me that they could have maintain it in a frozen state or provide a longer transition…

Remember Stadia? Google doesn't give a fuck about their users or customers. I would rather trust my money with Bernie Madoff than Google. I'm a 4 yrs customer with Google Cloud and they shutdown all my servers last friday. 3 days now and they still haven't gave me a resolution. Context: https://www.onvoard.com/blog/our-production-servers-was-susp...

I'm usually one for blaming the big company and arcane processes, but this squarely your fault. You missed emails asking for verification, and had your account suspended because of it. This will happen to you again on AWS or any other provider.

Stadia was disappointing, but they refunded everyone everything they had ever spent. Short of keeping the service running for free forever I'm not sure what more they could have done.

Re: Google Reader shut down announced ten years ago today

#123

Post by ElCapitanMarkla »

Can't believe that has been 10 years. I had loads of interesting RSS feeds that I flicked through each morning, I think I exported them all to some other service but for whatever reason it just didn't work as well for me and I've never bothered with RSS since.

I've seen a few people mention FreshRSS so I might give that a go

Re: Google Reader shut down announced ten years ago today

#125

Post by smusamashah »

Google reader died because Chrome to this date don't have a native RSS support. When Chrome was taking over the world, other major browsers (I only remember Firefox and opera) had native RSS support.

As people moved to Chrome, they started to forget and use RSS less and therefore the decline and the death of reader.

Re: Google Reader shut down announced ten years ago today

#126

Post by smusamashah »

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…

If Google cared about RSS, they would have had RSS support in Chrome. They don't have it to this date. When Chrome launched other browsers had RSS support of some sort.

Re: Google Reader shut down announced ten years ago today

#127

Post by saurik »

scarface74 wrote: post #89
saurik wrote: post #83

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Ok, that's great, because those are the people most likely to break a good thing. Maybe we can instead hire at least a few people (and given that Google uses shared database storage, build engineering, deployment, etc. I can't imagine we need many such people) who care more about things like a predictable schedule working on a low-stress product so they can have good work/life balance, to essentially just keep workin…

And then they get laid off and when it comes time for the behavioral interviews at their next company, they can’t discuss anything they did significant in STAR format. And their skills are too rusty to pass the DS&A section of the interview and they didn’t do anything significant to show off their system design skills. I work at $BigTech in the cloud consulting department (cloud app dev/“application modernization”) a…

That's the same problem, though, isn't it? Like, you are clearly not one of those people (based on your response there). And that's great: Google probably needs as lot of people like you to care to come up with new features and products. But the vast majority of jobs in this world--including ones that pay quite well, such as "doctor"--are not activities that are going to involve "scope and impact": they involve doing maintenance work using the established protocol--preferably with careful, predictable performance--on an existing system that someone designed or scoped potentially a long long time ago... one would expect most of software engineering would be the same way.

Re: Google Reader shut down announced ten years ago today

#128

Post by pirsquare »

maccard wrote: post #122
pirsquare wrote: post #87

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Remember Stadia? Google doesn't give a fuck about their users or customers. I would rather trust my money with Bernie Madoff than Google. I'm a 4 yrs customer with Google Cloud and they shutdown all my servers last friday. 3 days now and they still haven't gave me a resolution. Context: https://www.onvoard.com/blog/our-production-servers-was-susp...

I'm usually one for blaming the big company and arcane processes, but this squarely your fault. You missed emails asking for verification, and had your account suspended because of it. This will happen to you again on AWS or any other provider. Stadia was disappointing, but they refunded everyone everything they had ever spent. Short of keeping the service running for free forever I'm not sure what more they could ha…

"You missed emails asking for verification"

Did you saw the title of the email? "Important Information for your Account". It reads more like an informational email. How many important emails you've received this week? Could've been worded "[Action Required]", "Account Suspension Notice" etc. And they didn't even drop a notification when my servers were shutdown.

"This will happen to you again on AWS or any other provider."

Can't really agree to this. I read all the horror stories and GCloud is the only one who would suspend you for something like this. I need to be very clear, the suspension is not due to fraudulent issue. It's due to "missing some paperwork". I've been paying using the same card for the past 4 yrs.

Then voila they choose to suddenly dropped you an informational email and suspend you 10 days later.

How many saas apps are you using? 10, 20? Imagine if everyone pulls up something like this would you even have time to run your business?

See similar horror stories below. AWS doesn't pull this shit.

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=32547912

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=33737577

And lastly, when something like this happens, the minimal they could do is to get my servers back asap. But you know what? I've been trying all my means to get them to it back at least temp but nobody there gives a fuck. It's all the "none of my business" attitude between their teams.

Here's one more thing that I didn't mentioned. I replied to their verification team 3 times within an hour last friday. You know what happened? Their support team told me "their verification team" already replied to ask for more details when they haven't even read my replies (done all checks on my end can 100% confirm my msg was the last one out). And they've been dead silence over 3 days already. They don't give a fuck about screwing you and don't understand or care about the criticalness of their role.

Re: Google Reader shut down announced ten years ago today

#129

Post by bungle »

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 switched from viewing Google mostly positively to more skeptically

I think I share the feeling. I feel more and more disconnect from their stuff every day. Same thing with their hardware. Original Google Wifi was great, the Google Nest Wifi Pro is not. You cannot listen Rage Against The Machine's Bullet in the Head in their Youtube Music Premium without popups, that you cannot disable. The only answer from their customer support seems to be: "please, unsubscribe". The search engine feels also worse and worse. If you put anything more specific, all the links lead to fake sites. Youtube is still quite good, mostly because of the content not found elsewhere. In general I care Google a lot less these days, and I feel it is a mutual feeling.

Re: Google Reader shut down announced ten years ago today

#130

Post by saurik »

synu wrote: post #120
saurik wrote: post #103

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That's what makes it so amazing !!! It was a delicious self-parody. I remember reading it and thinking it made absolutely no sense as a metaphor: just imagine the poor archer being told "instead of having 15 arrows to take with you today, we've decided to give you three really heavy arrows"... that was the announcement that really made Google product management feel like a laughing stock to me, and is what I return t…

I always thought it was something like a comparison between ballistae with fewer shots and larger arrows (javelin size, really) doing more damage, and a storm of smaller regular arrows. Maybe I was being too generous with my interpretation.

I just remembered remembered that I had read something about the history of this phrase, and I found it: an answer on Quora from five years ago.

https://www.quora.com/What-is-the-origin-of-the-phrase-putti...

> The background seems an oft-used phrase in Sun Microsystems by the former CEO, "all the wood behind a single arrow" which means focus on a single product and be the best in it.

> When deer hunting .. "Real men bring only one arrow. They know how to aim (and they remember to take plenty of time when aiming), and they put all the wood behind that one arrow."

They even managed to find a usage of the same space of metaphor from Apple!

> While the layoffs are intended to reduce operating costs, Apple said it trimmed its technology portfolio to streamline development efforts. “Time to market is very important to me,” Amelio said. “With the narrowing of our focus, we can put more wood behind the arrow.”

> —Stephen Howard, “Narrowing tech focus, Apple cuts 4,100 jobs,” MacWeek, March 17, 1997

Post reply on HN