I think they made a mistake, It was also supporting google ranking. they had a chance to build a social network on top of the feeds.
Google Reader shut down announced ten years ago today
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Re: Google Reader shut down announced ten years ago today
#22> These changes are never easy (ten years ago)
"But we've had a lot more practice now, so it IS getting pretty easy." (now)
Re: Google Reader shut down announced ten years ago today
#23Jeez. Google really tarnished the hearts and minds of people everywhere when they shut this down. 10 years on, and people are still talking about it. I used it daily, too, and nothing really came close except maybe Feedly. I use Feedly now.
Re: Google Reader shut down announced ten years ago today
#24I still don't understand why people couldn't switch to a different RSS reader. The Google Reader narrative seems like it was just as helpful as the bank run we just had.
At the time Google Reader announced it's shutdown, alternatives didn't really exist -- the idea of creating an alternative and competing against a free product from Google didn't seem too economically feasible.
There were other RSS clients, but Google Reader's web-based, infinitely-scrolling interface was unique. Imagine any utility software you use daily, now imagine it being gone and having to use some alternative you know is inferior.
Fortunately a number of alternatives were quickly developed with different levels of success. But few were available the day the shutdown was announced.
Re: Google Reader shut down announced ten years ago today
#25I 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 also coincided with a persistent trend of HN itself no longer featuring random blog posts heavily but rather a) mostly popular news sites like NYTimes that finally started understanding the web demanded clickbait/Twitter-friendly high volume articles (where no one reads the article but shares the headline) and b) blogs that went viral via Twitter/FB/etc.
That was the new reality a decade ago. Social media apps was how you found blog posts, not RSS feeds.
I remember Reader dying and within a year finding a replacement but still moving on because the high noise-to-signal RSS simply wasn't doing it for me.
It's possible we all stopped using RSS because of Google but it's also possible we simply found replacements when prodded. Just like how us torrent obsessed pirates eventually moved on from harddrives full of MP3s to lazily curating Spotify accounts and from AVIs to Netflix. Google Reader was a far-too-early end of an era, but the fact we all didn't jump to a competitor like we did with Digg->Reddit was probably not just Google's fault.
Re: Google Reader shut down announced ten years ago today
#26Although inoreader is better now, I have never forgiven google.
Re: Google Reader shut down announced ten years ago today
#27I still don't understand why people couldn't switch to a different RSS reader. The Google Reader narrative seems like it was just as helpful as the bank run we just had.
I remember trying the alternatives back then (feedly, newsblur, etc) and they were just not as smooth, possibly because they were struggling to cope with the influx of Google Reader refugees.
i use feedly. works well.
Re: Google Reader shut down announced ten years ago today
#28I switched to feedly. No biggie, in retrospect. But, that was the first Google product where it really hit home, to me, how even if a product is fantastic and useful, Google will kill it without a second thought. It fundamentally changed my attitude toward Google and made me far more deliberate about what services I choose to rely on, especially from the big G. Obligatory link to https://killedbygoogle.com/
At Google too many people have the power to launch products to keep all of the products around forever.
Re: Google Reader shut down announced ten years ago today
#29I 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 think it was the first thing they'd killed which had been around for quite a while, still had devoted users, and Google didn't offer a replacement. If you look at the graveyard, the pre-Reader things they killed were things which had flopped (e.g. Buzz), things which were no longer relevant (e.g Gears), acquisitions, and mergers where they had two redundant products (e.g. Google Video).
Re: Google Reader shut down announced ten years ago today
#30[deleted]