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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

#251

Post by compsciphd »

ilikepi wrote: post #245
compsciphd wrote: post #211

Google Reader's shutdown made it realize that google didn't understand communities and platforms. OK, you want to push Google+? Isn't google+ supposed to be a platform (and not simply an application). Let google reader be an application on top of the Google+ platform. i.e. facebook is valuable because people share things on it. Why would you kill an app that is causing people to share things with each other. Leverage…

> OK, you want to push Google+? Isn't google+ supposed to be a platform (and not simply an application). Let google reader be an application on top of the Google+ platform. They actually did start to integrate them. Google Reader had native sharing functionality for several years. Then in 2011 they suddenly removed it and replaced[1] it with sharing through Google+. My small network of Reader-using friends were split…

sort of

"Integrating with Google+ also helps us streamline Reader overall. So starting today we'll be turning off friending, following, shared items and comments in favor of similar Google+ functionality."

i.e. reader could be used to add content to google+ but not to use google+

I could share a link on google+ but couldn't see any of the interactions unless I went to google+. If google+ was meant to be a platform, I should have been able to see the comments or other peoples shared items from within the google reader app. It should just have been one way to interact with google+ amongst many.

Re: Google Reader shut down announced ten years ago today

#252

Post by asoneth »

ghaff wrote: post #228
asoneth wrote: post #209

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 b…

On the other hand, I never used a thing in Google Reader other than subscribe to feeds. It's probably inevitable though that it would have become more of a social media product over time.

> It's probably inevitable though that it would have become more of a social media product over time.

Personally I would have welcomed that.

Google Reader did essentially become a social media product over time. By the end it was the primary social network for many of the people in my research area. I was mystified when they shut it down to redirect resources to yet another Facebook clone rather on building on a successful foundation that was already present.

By now most people realize that this is just how Google operates, by shuffling resources around in a blind panic. But many people can point to the first product shutdown that crystalized the realization for them. Google Reader was mine, and judging by the comments in this thread it served the same purpose for others as well.

Re: Google Reader shut down announced ten years ago today

#255

Post by yamtaddle »

saurik wrote: post #103
whatshisface wrote: post #88

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I haven't heard the phrase "more wood behind fewer arrows" before, but I am pretty sure that never in the history of the evolution of projectiles was that tradeoff ever taken in that direction.

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'm a fan of how the phrase gets dumber the more you think about it, and how it's just a way to try to make "put all your eggs in one basket" sound like a good thing. It's delightfully stupid.

Re: Google Reader shut down announced ten years ago today

#256

Post by thr717272 »

AlecSchueler wrote: post #220
boxed wrote: post #210

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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).

So if RSS took off with the general public and this was your plan you'd very quickly be left with an empty feed reader. The point is that RSS was/less overrun by advertising than the web because of cultural reasons, not thanks to something inherent to the technology.

There was already ads in feeds or feeds that were nothing more than links.

But IIRC there were also sites that let you pay for a full feed and I think something good could have come out of it.

Re: Google Reader shut down announced ten years ago today

#257

Post by thr717272 »

paulcole wrote: post #242
rhaway84773 wrote: post #142

Earlier 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.

> It was killed because Google decided Facebook was an existential threat to them (citation needed) This really feels like your (and a popular) reading of the situation, but isn’t as unequivocal as you make it seem. To me it’s more like the iMac not having a floppy drive or no USBA ports on the newer MacBooks. Google saw that the web was trending away from blogs and written content. They removed one of the tools that…

I'm fairly sure someone here can provide you with a proper citation, but in the meanwhile I was very much online here and elsewhere during that time and IIRC it was common knowledge at the time and AFAIK nobody came up with a better hypothesis.

Re: Google Reader shut down announced ten years ago today

#258

Post by Eric_WVGG »

nanna wrote: post #108

I finally managed to create a habit out of RSS after years of trying. What worked was,I know this may sound obvious, using a phone based reader instead of a desktop. It's like a categorizable, algorithmless social media feed now, full of content that people spent more than a few minutes writing, and it's great. Aside from regular feeds I feed in HN through hnrss.org, YouTube directly, and the odd twitter account thro…

Well it's comfortable, newspaper- or magazine-style reading, right? For me, RSS is now inextricable from my iPad, I can't imagine reading news any other way.

A bit funny how Apple tried so hard with their Newsstand thing, and then later Apple News+ or whatever. The solution was RSS all along.

Re: Google Reader shut down announced ten years ago today

#259

Post by Kototama »

pirsquare wrote: post #91
js4ever wrote: post #16

This is probably the inflection point in history where I lost all trust I had in Google. I don't know how much they saved by shutting it down (probably nearly nothing) but I know that for me and people around me it was a such terrible signal that I never trusted again Google for anything serious/business. Well done guys

Yes in my case I was a 4 yrs customer with Google Cloud and they abruptly shutdown all my servers last friday. Any decent human being would at least try to rectify things ASAP, except for Google. 3 days now and they still haven't gave me a resolution. They're the most dysfunctional organization I've seen in my life. It's like communications between teams goes with a "none of my business" attitude. Context: https://ww…

> They're the most dysfunctional organization I've seen in my life.

Try UPS...

Re: Google Reader shut down announced ten years ago today

#260

Post by svachalek »

paulcole wrote: post #242
rhaway84773 wrote: post #142

Earlier 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.

> It was killed because Google decided Facebook was an existential threat to them (citation needed) This really feels like your (and a popular) reading of the situation, but isn’t as unequivocal as you make it seem. To me it’s more like the iMac not having a floppy drive or no USBA ports on the newer MacBooks. Google saw that the web was trending away from blogs and written content. They removed one of the tools that…

The use of passive voice here is a little comical. "The lion noticed that the gazelle was headed for its stomach, and it turned out to be right."
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