Geoffrey Wiseman

Alas, Poor Reader

I used it, Horatio. A reader of infinite scrolling, of most excellent syncing. He hath sent me the daily news a thousand times.

So. Google is killing Google Reader.

I use Google Reader a lot. I read a lot of RSS feeds and share interesting articles with people over email, social media, chat systems. I use Google Reader almost every day, often more than one time per day. Google says I've read about ~300k items since October 2008, when they started tracking trends. I use the web interface, I sync desktop and mobile clients with it, I read on my computer, my iPad, my Phone.

Google killing a product I use all the time is frustrating.

@Pinboard put it well:

There are many people for whom Google Reader is one of their most-used Google services, after Search. While I recognize that Google may feel they need to focus, I wish they were focusing on this. I think it matches well with their goals as a company, and I think its within their power to do a really good job at it, particularly if they try a lot harder than they have been.

Why Are They Doing This?

RSS Readers never really "crossed the chasm" from early adopters to the mainstream. I know lots of technical and moderately technical people who have used RSS Readers and Google Reader in particular, but they're still the minority. Most people get their links by visiting websites directly, through reddit, Hacker News, Twitter, Facebook.

However, Google has never really focused on Reader. Chris Wetherell and Om Malik tell of Google almost cancelled it before launch, and were never really that supportive. It has stagnated for years. Once the pain of switching services is over and done, it's entirely likely that the end result will be better than Google's benign neglect. Marco Arment makes that argument well, while Aldo Cortesi writes that the internet would be better off if Google Reader had never existed.

What Next?

I liked Google Reader. I liked having access to a decent web client. I liked being able to use a wide array of desktop and mobile RSS readers that would sync with Google Reader. Some of them were traditional news readers, others were a little different, like Flipboard. I liked knowing I could open any one and they would know what I'd already read elsewhere.

For the next few months, I'll probably just keep using Google Reader while I keep an eye on the available options and get a better sense for who's stepping up to the plate.

Feedly and their Normandy project seems to be an early contender, and I'm interested to learn more about David Smith's Feed Wrangler:

I had been toying with the idea of building something like this for months now, but at this point there just isn't enough time to do a good job before the transition begins, so I think I'm going to put my hopes on the efforts of someone else.

We'll see. I hope that the RSS Reader market is getting better, not worse, but there will be some pain between here and there.