One thing I haven't seen mentioned is how odd it is that google is killing a product likely used widely within Google .
Buzz was widely used internally when it was killed. I think it may have been more successful inside than out.
Google is about to learn a tough lesson
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Re: Google is about to learn a tough lesson
#62Google officially lost the "we're not Facebook /Microsoft /Apple [other "evil empire"] company." They have played that game for way too long and many people fell for it. Since Larry Page took over, Google has lost it's soul; now it's just a greedy, money grubbing machine. Nothing is sacred anymore, no matter how much they repeat http://www.google.com/about/company/philosophy/
wait... your saying that because they are discontinuing a product? I'm not suggesting that google is/isn't evil these days, but I would suggest that there is absolutely no moral aspect to discontinuing a feed reader.
I think it's more a reaction to their general recent policy of doing far less away from their core business. They used to have a ton of projects with a very relaxed attitude about making money from any given project. Now that they've given up on focusing on that much beyond their bottom line, they're acting much more like other large companies which is not necessarily a good thing.
Re: Google is about to learn a tough lesson
#63> Google made a big mistake cancelling Google Reader that will have severe ripple effects to its empire. Oh come on: enough already. Obviously there was a /vocal/ user base which is very loudly now upset that the product is being sunset. Guess what, Google didn't see it as a large enough set of people to make it worth monetizing. Such is life. Move on. It's certainly not the end of Google if that's what this article…
I don't think people who use RSS realize what a small minority they are. I don't use RSS or Google Reader, I've never even seen it, but this week my Facebook has been filled by a tiny slice of my friends who are incredibly upset. The vast majority are just shrugging and not caring one bit. Only Google has the actual numbers on how many people are using their Reader, and they simply did the math. End of story. It's no…
Google reader is a pretty important tool for competitive intel. The only really tuneable alternatives are expensive services that don't do the job half as well.
Re: Google is about to learn a tough lesson
#64Google officially lost the "we're not Facebook /Microsoft /Apple [other "evil empire"] company." They have played that game for way too long and many people fell for it. Since Larry Page took over, Google has lost it's soul; now it's just a greedy, money grubbing machine. Nothing is sacred anymore, no matter how much they repeat http://www.google.com/about/company/philosophy/
wait... your saying that because they are discontinuing a product? I'm not suggesting that google is/isn't evil these days, but I would suggest that there is absolutely no moral aspect to discontinuing a feed reader.
"discontinuing a product"
I guess you need to unpack what that product was. It was loss-leading free product that killed the ecosystem that proceeded it. That whole 'embrace, extend, extinguish' thing is what many people are decrying as a tad 'evil'.
Re: Google is about to learn a tough lesson
#65Earlier quoted context omitted.
> You dont know a damn thing about RSS , Aaron Schwartz did not died so a dch like you can claim RSS is dead , go back to your Twitter/Facebook/write your dumb social network here/ sandbox ... you just dont have a clue... Yeah, tell me more about Aaron "Schwartz."
[deleted]
congrats for providing a textbook example of a non constructive answer
Re: Google is about to learn a tough lesson
#66I sympathize with Google Reader users. I find it occasionally tiresome to be half-foot in an ecosystem. But I've come to accept that this is just the way that Google does things. I love Gmail/Calendar/Maps/DamnNearEverything. I love Groups, which they've recently taken pains to hide[1] so I suspect its up soon for the chopping block. Heck I even love Google+. All that said, at least they had the gall to kill it. One…
> Groups isn't even on the extended products list in the Gmail header bar, though Reader is! You have to click "Even more" to get to Groups.
They have been really destroying Groups for a while now. The new ui is terrible, the new url format is also bad. They got rid of instructions for emailing for subscriptions, and someone reported to me earlier today that emailing list+subscribe@googlegroups.com doesn't even work anymore.... are they just going to dump their usenet archives?
Re: Google is about to learn a tough lesson
#67Look, the TFA is full of crap. Here is the reality: today I would have a hard time coming up with a better alternative for a free productivity suite and search engine for most individuals and small to medium enterprises. When I am talking to someone looking to run things under their own domain, they might ask "do you think Google is going to discontinue support for Apps/GMail/Docs/Drive/etc?" To which I would have to reply "very unlikely". I think the OP overestimates the influence of the people that used GR. Sure, some had pull but the pragmatic ones can see the difference between Google's flagship products and GR.
There are plenty of reasons to not buy into the Google Ecosystem, but this is not one of them. Then again, all we need to do is wait a few months and see if the earnings report supports the OP's claim or Google's strategy. My money is ong Google.
Re: Google is about to learn a tough lesson
#68Earlier quoted context omitted.
Reading the commentary on this I feel like I'm only schlep in the tech industry that didn't use Google Reader. But then I ask my non-tech friends and guess what 90% of them say "Oh, I had some feeds on there from awhile back but I never really read them that often". I wonder if the people who used it are such trendsetters why that is the case ...
That's exactly my situation. I set it up, used it for about a week a long time ago, and never logged into it again. I think the coolest feature of it was its massive database of RSS feeds. I liked being able to flip through tons of categories and add them. However, it wasn't enough to keep me coming back, and that's probably why Google is discontinuing it. I wish there was some way to export all those feeds, though.
Google Takeout allows you to get all your data from various Google services https://www.google.com/takeout/
What surprises me most is that Microsoft, which has a severe case of Google envy hasn't created a web based RSS service of it's own. They should make an offer to buy Reader and Feedburner too, since Google seems to have little interest in supporting these products.
Re: Google is about to learn a tough lesson
#69How I read HN:
1) Subscribe to HN feed in Google Reader
2) Install Reeder app everywhere (phone, iPad, laptop)
3) Link Reeder to Google Reader
4) Read happy... all items synced across all platforms, read, unread, starred.
5) Any time I have a free moment I pop open Reeder on my phone and read HN.
I don't give a %$@*%& about "social"...
Mission #1 is now to find another service that will reliably feed RSS feeds into Reeder.
Re: Google is about to learn a tough lesson
#70And as everyone knows the word count tool initiated the downfall of microsoft word empire. Seriously, I don't think it was a bad decision to kill the reader. Not a nice one, but I think certainly not one where Google is going to learn a lesson about.
That wasn't quite the point -- it was that the influencers cared about the word-count tool. (You might also notice that Word currently has a word-count tool.)
I think his story got mangled in a game of telephone. Microsoft loves their word count. Competitors got bit by it, though:
This story is as old as the PC. Most of the time, what happens is that they give their program to a journalist to review, and the journalist reviews it by writing their review using the new word processor, and then the journalist tries to find the "word count" feature which they need because most journalists have precise word count requirements, and it's not there, because it's in the "80% that nobody uses," and the journalist ends up writing a story that attempts to claim simultaneously that lite programs are good, bloat is bad, and I can't use this damn thing 'cause it won't count my words. If I had a dollar for every time this has happened I would be very happy.
From former Microsoft employee Joel: http://www.joelonsoftware.com/articles/fog0000000020.html He has links to reviews in the original
There are stories, though, of Microsoft shipping out beta copies of Microsoft Word with debugging all turned on, which made it slow, and despite saying so very carefully to all reviewers who got a copy, they still got torn apart for it being slow. I think the story is in "Coding The Microsoft Way" which I haven't seen in over a decade.