Google Reader is dead • Hacker News Board

Re: Google Reader is dead

#141

Post by pavel_lishin » Tue, Jul 02, 2013, 3:00 PM UTC

droidist2 wrote: post #85

davidjohnstone wrote: post #42

Earlier quoted context omitted.

As much as my life would have been easier this year without the decision to close Google Reader (I think this is what they call #firstworldproblems), it's a good thing that they didn't change their mind and decide to not shut it down at the last minute. Too many people have invested too much time in creating viable alternatives to Google Reader, and un-discontinuing it would have thrown a massive spanner in the works…

Couldn't 99% of all complaints/concerns (especially on the internet) be classified as first world problems?

If you live in the first world, sure.

Re: Google Reader is dead

#142

Post by pavel_lishin » Tue, Jul 02, 2013, 3:01 PM UTC

tempestn wrote: post #62

steve19 wrote: post #8

Right up till the 11th hour I held out hope that Google would give Reader a last minute stay of execution. A sad day indeed.

What they should have done is announced that they were killing it, then when the entirely predictable public outcry hit, 'listen to the community', and make it a paid service instead. From the numbers Feedly and Newsblur and such are picking up, it doesn't seem like a stretch that a paid version of Google Reader could have brought in at least $10M/year, even given the resulting loss of users. The only difficulty woul…

I think a lot of people would have refused to pay out of principle; it's basically a hostage negotiation. "Give us $10, and you can keep Google Reader."

Re: Google Reader is dead

#143

Post by pavel_lishin » Tue, Jul 02, 2013, 3:03 PM UTC

MarkMc wrote: post #108

mikelat wrote: post #44

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Google's wants to know as much about me as possible. Which is the reason they shut it down most probably. They can data mine your documents, emails, social networking etc but something like google reader doesn't help much. They most they'll get out of it is a few rss feeds and can analyze what you like, but hell they already know what you search for so it's useless data.

I have the opposite view - when I use Reader the folks at Google know how often I click on certain topics, and how long I spend reading each topic. My gut tells me that such information would be quite useful to their search product, even if they have already know my search history. And for some users Google will not know their search history and social information. A similar logic applies to Google Checkout (aka Goog…

I think that the number of people who use Google Reader is tiny in comparison to the number of people who use gmail, which itself is probably fairly small compared to the number of people who use the search engine.

Re: Google Reader is dead

#144

Post by pavel_lishin » Tue, Jul 02, 2013, 3:05 PM UTC

petercooper wrote: post #48

It'll be less important now than it was 3-6 years ago, but get ready for all those FeedBurner subscriber count widgets to show huge subscriber # crashes as Reader no longer checks in. Back in the day, they were a sort of informal auditing system and definitely helped me land advertisers for my blog (simply because I could "prove" I had 20,000 readers or whatever). Thankfully I ditched the Web and moved to e-mail and…

This is going to sound antagonistic, but I'm genuinely curious: How many subscribers did you lose when you switched from RSS to email, and how do you know that all of them are receiving and reading your dispatches?

Personally, getting an e-mail instead of an RSS feed is sub-optimal - I can't easily add things to pocket from e-mail. I'm also wondering how many people trained their clients to re-route to spam.

Re: Google Reader is dead

#145

Post by mikeash » Tue, Jul 02, 2013, 3:05 PM UTC

fooqux wrote: post #140

coldtea wrote: post #138

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Regardless of how many products they have, they still have one less after shutting down Reader. I'd say the argument still stands. Not if, in the same period they "closed the Reader to in order to focus", they started more than one products, all around the map. If I tell you: "I stopped going to the gym in order to focus on my painting more. Oh, and I also started bowling, belly-dancing, snooker, and etching classe…

That is fallacious. You're assuming they weren't going to start those other products anyway.

Google said "fewer products". Doesn't matter whether or not they were going to start those products anyway, what they're saying is incorrect.

Re: Google Reader is dead

#146

Post by pavel_lishin » Tue, Jul 02, 2013, 3:06 PM UTC

frankcaron wrote: post #132

I'm curious; given that HN represents a community that could very well be construed as the "power user" archetype, how much would people here have paid for Reader as a service? $5/month? $100/year? Free with a Google Drive subscription?

For Google Reader specifically, probably $0.00 - it would feel too much like a hostage negotiation at this point.

I am, however, paying $24/year for NewsBlur right now, so I guess $2/month is my starting bid.

Re: Google Reader is dead

#147

Post by pavel_lishin » Tue, Jul 02, 2013, 3:07 PM UTC

bering wrote: post #46

davidw wrote: post #36

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm trying it, but it has a few things that bug me. They messed with the arrow keys - they no longer scroll the page. I'm always accidentally going to the next or previous article. ARGH! I miss the smart sorting order that Reader had - it was really good about bubbling stuff I cared about up to the top and letting me whip through the rest.

The developer has listened to the feedback on scrolling and added configuration options so you can now use the arrow keys. Bugged me as well, but I'm happy with the new options.

I dislike those options. I do not want to set a percentage to scroll by; I want to use whatever my browser would normally scroll by natively.

Re: Google Reader is dead

#148

Post by res0nat0r » Tue, Jul 02, 2013, 3:10 PM UTC

coldtea wrote: post #135

laureny wrote: post #126

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> He's pointing out that their stated justification doesn't make a lot of sense. Google says they're shutting down Reader to put more focus on a smaller number of products, but they're just as scattered as ever You can't criticize Google for shutting down Reader and then accuse them of being scattered in the same sentence. By shutting down Reader, they are limiting their scattering, and Reader is not the only product…

> You can't criticize Google for shutting down Reader and then accuse them of being scattered in the same sentence. By shutting down Reader, they are limiting their scattering, and Reader is not the only product they are shutting down. No, you very much can. Since, you know, they are shutting down a product in their main area of expertise, only to pursue BS non-products all around the map.

I don't think Google want to remain "experts" in the complex field of RSS aggregation anymore. It was probably a fun side project for a group of engineers, was written, then got sidetracked, then became not interesting to work on anymore, then was shutdown to focus on other more interesting tasks. Just like what their statement above says...

Re: Google Reader is dead

#149

Post by cfinke » Tue, Jul 02, 2013, 3:11 PM UTC

stephen_mcd wrote: post #57

If you've left finding a replacement to now, please take a second to check out kouio: https://kouio.com We posted it to HN a few days ago, and since then have had over 600 signups and processed over 1.5 million feed items! We've made a ton of tiny improvements since then, with many more to come.

I tried it when you posted it, but I gave up on it when it took 15 seconds to load any content after logging in :-(

Re: Google Reader is dead

#150

Post by Shooti » Tue, Jul 02, 2013, 3:12 PM UTC

marbletiles wrote: post #123

batiudrami wrote: post #116

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I don't think my position is any closer to trolling than the also cliche comments of 'Google have so much money, running reader must be next-to-nothing for them', 'if Google gave me the option, I'd gladly pay for it', 'yeah sure, the (maybe) one full time staff required to look after Reader is really taking energy away from other projects' which is basically all of the comments on these threads. That was what my post…

The "weird sense" comes directly from Google's pitches, which amount to "use our free service: Trust all your data to it! Nothing will go wrong, we're here forever!". Which is a pitch they continue to make, with Drive and Hangouts and each successive launch, but never once cautioning "btw if this doesn't work out for us we'll kill the service". They even relaunch previously failed projects in the same spaces where th…

>They even relaunch previously failed projects in the same spaces where they've pulled this before, with Keep aiming for the same space Notebook (RIP) did. Do they think we're stupid?

This gets repeated a lot (understandable given its launches proximity to the Reader shutdown notice) but its inaccurate. Keep doesn't address the same use case as Evernote/Notebook at all and isn't trying to. Its more of a Notepad/Apple Notes competitor if anything.