Earlier quoted context omitted.
It’s a blessing in disguise that the protocol didn’t go more “mainstream” and get exploited to death by opportunistic assholes.
RSS isn't vulnerable to such attacks though.
RSS is just as exploitable as anything else.
Google Reader shut down announced ten years ago today
201–210 of 354 posts
Re: Google Reader shut down announced ten years ago today
#202Earlier quoted context omitted.
For me it was Google Talk. It hit the sweet spot of a lightweight chat app that didn't take any configuration or convincing for my non-techie friends. I still miss it.
And you could use XMPP.
There were audio bridges across to POTS. I used it to talk to people on other chat systems. It was great and felt like the future. Then it was gone.
Re: Google Reader shut down announced ten years ago today
#203I 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 was the reason they killed it for me. Google Reader was successful and growing. It wasn’t killed on its own merits. It was killed because Google decided Facebook was an existential threat to them so they had to do everything they could to make Google+ work, including killing otherwise successful and popular products like Reader because, killing it may lead to a slight increase in G+ adoption.
Which is particularly silly, since Reader comments & sharing had already become a social network.
Re: Google Reader shut down announced ten years ago today
#204Earlier quoted context omitted.
RSS isn't vulnerable to such attacks though.
Put an advert in the feed, make the post nothing but a link to the web url etc There are plenty of anti-patterns to follow in RSS. We just didn't see them because only techies were using feeds.
DF has been putting ads in feed forever.
Re: Google Reader shut down announced ten years ago today
#205Re: Google Reader shut down announced ten years ago today
#206Earlier quoted context omitted.
It was the reason they killed it for me. Google Reader was successful and growing. It wasn’t killed on its own merits. It was killed because Google decided Facebook was an existential threat to them so they had to do everything they could to make Google+ work, including killing otherwise successful and popular products like Reader because, killing it may lead to a slight increase in G+ adoption.
What stops anyone else from building another reader?
Nothing, and it's been done. Hosted RSS feed readers are numerous now.
However... the vast majority of them have tons of "features" that just make their service slow and bloated.
I now just run Miniflux on a mini PC in my house, and that works really well.
Re: Google Reader shut down announced ten years ago today
#207There was a very common character in many '90s movies, a sad old man who kept going on and on and on about 'Nam. Everything they said was about 'Nam, everything that happened reminded them about 'Nam, they kept telling the same story over and over again. Think Walter from The big Lebowski, Ned from South park, etc. The thing is it was only about 20 years between the end of the war and when these characters were created, ie not that long.
It's been 10 years folks, it's time to Let it Go. If you don't, sometime over the next 10 years you're going to become that character. I've already seen it happen too friends of mine with the Iraq war (not participating, protesting) it's not a good look.
It's time to let Google Reader rest in peace.
Re: Google Reader shut down announced ten years ago today
#208Earlier quoted context omitted.
It was the reason they killed it for me. Google Reader was successful and growing. It wasn’t killed on its own merits. It was killed because Google decided Facebook was an existential threat to them so they had to do everything they could to make Google+ work, including killing otherwise successful and popular products like Reader because, killing it may lead to a slight increase in G+ adoption.
Even now, 10 yrs on, that makes no sense (their justification, not yours). How do you convince a bunch of blog authors to switch from 'free-to-air' and searchable everywhere RSS feeds, to move into closed social media platform? It seems like idiotic management making idiotic decisions completely out of touch with the userbase has been with us since the dawn of the web. Just this week, Spotify are turning the mobile a…
Monetising by adding ads to a content, they fetched from other sites was a questionable back than. So, they couldn't just add ads to the reader easily.
They were believing google plus would be popular. So, having a closed social network, where they could control everything and put ads without any complains makes sense.
Besides, Reader was not that popular among the general public.
Re: Google Reader shut down announced ten years ago today
#209Earlier quoted context omitted.
It was the reason they killed it for me. Google Reader was successful and growing. It wasn’t killed on its own merits. It was killed because Google decided Facebook was an existential threat to them so they had to do everything they could to make Google+ work, including killing otherwise successful and popular products like Reader because, killing it may lead to a slight increase in G+ adoption.
What stops anyone else from building another reader?
There are many fine RSS readers, but what I miss most was the social and community features.
The communities that spring up around things like GReader are like lightning in a bottle. Perhaps the companies that can afford to build things like that have concluded that other forms of social media are more profitable.
There still are niches of the internet that operate like a book club for excitable nerds, but they can be short-lived. Most eventually succumb to politics, lecturers, eternal September, and/or a zero-sum debate-team mentality.
Re: Google Reader shut down announced ten years ago today
#210Earlier quoted context omitted.
RSS isn't vulnerable to such attacks though.
Put an advert in the feed, make the post nothing but a link to the web url etc There are plenty of anti-patterns to follow in RSS. We just didn't see them because only techies were using feeds.
So? You just unsubscribe from any that are shit. Unlike on google where you can't delete a site from the search results (which you can on kagi btw, which is great).