
Google Reader lived on borrowed time: creator Chris Wetherell reflects - shrikant
http://gigaom.com/2013/03/13/chris-wetherll-google-reader/
======
kryptiskt
I would have thought that Google would keep Reader running. Not because there
would be a strong business case, but because pissing of both bloggers for
fucking with their channels (who in aggregate is a huge influencer) and
information omnivores (many of who love to share opinions of companies and
products with their social circle) is a huge PR hit to take for saving
peanuts. They couldn't have done worse by buying full-page attack ads against
themselves in NYT.

I went to Newsblur last year, because I like to support the little sites when
they're filling my need, but Reader was the Google product I used most by a
mile, I'll miss it. I accept that Google doesn't make things for me anymore,
I'll look elsewhere for exciting products.

------
conradfr
The article hints that it's the recommendation system that is hard and use a
lot of resources.

Funny as it is exactly the part of the product I didn't care about.

~~~
Turing_Machine
Right. I don't recall ever subscribing to one of its recommendations.

Mostly what I got were suggestions for crap pseudo-blogs from the Gawker
content farms.

------
danohuiginn
"Reader is (was?) for information junkies; not just tech nerds. This market
totally exists and is weirdly under-served (and is possibly affluent)."

This is what I don't understand about the death of the RSS ecosystem. A whole
class of professionals spend their days reading text -- in government, in
finance, in specialist journalism. Many would pay for a decent reader; it's a
tool of their trade, after all. You don't need mass adoption; a few thousand
people at $20/month would keep you ticking over. So why haven't there been
more companies in this space.

~~~
616c
I have seen companies tried, and worked for a strategic consulting firm at one
time who was heavily reliant on RSS feeds for sending information (we were
basicly human parsers on very topic-specific items). And they used NewsGator.
I get the impression NewGator is not doing that well, and the "I will pay good
money" sector you suggest exists does not; very few people are willing to pay
for good interface, despite a strong use case. I say the same about movies and
television. There is a self-serving expectation of free, and few buck this
trend unless they really need it and the pay-for services are not worth it, or
do just enough. Maybe others can tell me their experiences.

I am definitely someone affected by this, and continue to look into better RSS
management every year or so for this reason. It appears building my own
solution is by far the best approach, and that is true for a whole bunch of
software anyway. Oh well.

~~~
dodyg
It is time consuming. I have been working on my own open source reader and it
takes a lot of effort to get right.

Even worse, I am having a hard time to get people to try it out so I can get
feedback to improve it. I keep working on it just because I rely on it for my
daily news/podcast.

~~~
ersii
This is a great opportunity to get a few testers/users, if you'd like to
continue developing it.

I do however understand that this can be quite overwhelming - so I'd recommend
you'd only take in people manually (ie. no automatic signup - that'll probably
be quite the load..)

~~~
dodyg
It's Android client based <http://goo.gl/kShgp> so it has no server limitation
and it is actively being developed <https://github.com/dodyg/AndroidRivers>

I am helping out Cartulary as well <https://github.com/daveajones/cartulary>
that will provide S3 based RSS aggregation functionality.

------
sp332
Google Reader is probably the only place that even has an archive of many
defunct blogs. Are they going to archive them somewhere or just throw that
trove of web history away?

~~~
Mahn
Most likely the later, sounds like we should take care of preserving them
ourselves.

~~~
sp332
Brainstorming session on irc://efnet/#archiveteam

Edit: wrong channel d'oh

------
Tichy
Interesting that apparently the data generated by Reader was not valuable
enough for Google. +1 are sufficient for Google to understand people's
interests? Seems to me information junkies could have been an important source
of information.

But then the SEO spammers probably also just created Google Reader profiles
with fake reading lists?

How is the situation on G+, is it easy for SEO spammers to game it or is it
harder, for example because of the real name policy?

------
Spooky23
So Reader was a red-headed stepchild from the inception.

I mostly abandoned Reader for Twitter when Google made it clear that the one
true path was Google+. My team used the share/comment features in Reader
constantly, and got alot of value from it. And not just for blogs -- we'd
subscribe to Google Alert RSS feeds and use Reader to annotate.

Google+ Hangouts are amazing. It's Facebook cloning is ok. But it is weak for
the core workflow that Reader gave you. Twitter is close, but it's 100% public
nature limits it utility for me.

At the end of the day, I lost a functionality that was valuable to me. It's
too bad, but I'll live.

------
idont
Apple had Mapgate. Google has Readergate.

~~~
evan_
This is a great example of trials faced by both companies if you have suffered
a head injury and can only remember the lady six months.

~~~
evan_
thanks, autocorrect- of course I meant "last"

------
leadsrain
Google now more focus on those products which gives more profitability and
revenue either direct or through advertising.<http://leadsrain.com/>

~~~
shrikant
Can the mods kill this account? It is clearly a spammer.

