
Sorry Google; you can Keep it to yourself - iProject
http://gigaom.com/2013/03/20/sorry-google-you-can-keep-it-to-yourself/
======
ghshephard
My favorite comment from the post:

"And by the way – how is this app strategic for you guys and Reader is not? A
little clarity would certainly be appreciated."

I too would love to know what Google is thinking here.

~~~
drivebyacct2
It ties into Google Now. It's already super convenient for me. Swipe up
"Google, note to self, pick up milk". Now I have a TODO.

Combine that with what Google already knows (that I leave work at 5 and drive
within half a mile of a grocery store), think about the intelligence they
could bring to my Todo list.

(I know lots of people aren't going to like the privacy implications, my
comment isn't meant to apologize or touch on that aspect)

~~~
MatthewPhillips
How is Now strategic?

~~~
brian_cloutier
Google's corporate mission is to organize the world's information.

Taken from <http://www.google.com/landing/now/>

> Google Now gets you just the right information at just the right time.

Google Now extends the mission to include personal information. The plan is to
eventually know what you want before you know you want it.

How could that be any more strategic?

~~~
tlrobinson
One could argue Reader organized information as well.

~~~
rjtavares
Reader lets _you_ organize information, not Google for you.

~~~
Terretta
Better kill Calendar then. Can't have us mortals organizing our own schedules.

And Google Drive better get rid of folders. Just have a box you drop files on.
If you need them back, hopefully you can figure out a search term to find
them. But not using any search operators, those are too much like letting you
organize.

------
dudus
Google Reader had an easy and clear migration path to export your data. I
can't understand why people keep bashing Google for it. Just take your data to
somewhere else. If tomorrow Keep goes away they'll do the same.

~~~
jseliger
_Google Reader had an easy and clear migration path to export your data._

It's not just about the data: it's about the habits and familiarity
surrounding the process of using the data.

In RSS, I've been using NetNewsWire for years, even though it's basically
abandon-ware and has really fallen behind. Why do I keep using it? Because it
works okay, and when I've tried to switch—most recently to DevonTHINK PRO—I've
gone back to NetNewsWire.

I'd happily pay for a new version or for a better OS X desktop-only RSS app,
but I'm a very small market.

~~~
taligent
Reader is a desktop RSS app and it has been pretty popular app for OSX and
iOS.

~~~
DigitalTurk
You probably mean Reeder instead of Reader. It's my favorite RSS app. FWIW,
the author has stated the app will continue working after Google Reader
disappears. I don't know about the details.

------
ufmace
This has probably been said 100 times already on 100 other HN threads, but so
what? Quit the whining. I have been using Reader for years, and I'm mildly
disappointing that they're closing it. I know perfectly well that there will
be a dozen solid replacements that probably have more features before Reader
actually dies. That's the way the tech world works - services close all the
time for any number of reasons. None of them is all that special, though - if
the service genuinely added value for lots of people, then there will be
replacements, and if there isn't one, then make one yourself and bask in the
profitability.

If you're that upset about it, then what do you really want from the tech
world? A world where no service is ever killed or changed in a way that makes
it less useful to you? We wouldn't have all of the awesome stuff that we have
now if thousands of companies weren't willing to kill or change stuff that was
unprofitable and take a chance on something new. At least Google is being
pretty nice about it - we have months of notice and easy ways to get our feed
lists out of Reader. They could have just up and pulled the plug without
telling anyone or giving anyone a chance to get data out. Lots of services
have been killed in just that way before.

Personally, I'm waiting a few weeks for all of the other services to settle
down and get used to the massive traffic influx. After that, I expect I'll
find something better than Reader and get used to that. And then that will be
killed someday too, and I'll have to find yet another thing. Life goes on.

~~~
ghshephard
A lot of people just don't want to go the hassle of discovering, learning and
configuring new tools. If I look at my daily toolset - between social
networking, document management/creation, task tracking, work tools - I have
on the order of 40 - 50 different tools. Each one of those tools has taken me
some amount of effort to really come up to speed on so that I'm productive.

For example - I use Evernote for tracking meetings, and I use Omnifocus for
personal task tracking. It took me 6-10 hours to learn the ins and outs of
each of those tools - and I'm pretty happy with the way they work for me. More
importantly, I'm reasonably certain that both of those tools/services will be
around several years from now, so I can continue to use them, track my tasks,
without having to pick up a new tool.

This concept of _tool persistence_ is really important and valuable for a
certain segment of the population - and I think it's what Om is expressing
here. He doesn't really trust that Google will persist their attention to
"Keep", because they've started shutting down other popular services after a
few years, so what's to prevent them from doing the same thing with "Keep".
He'll stick with evernote, and I can understand why. It's really an attempt to
make it clear why Evernote should be successful in the face of an attack by
Google.

------
jinushaun
Anyone else remember Google Notebook? Yeah, they killed that too. Pretty much
Evernote before Evernote got big.

No thanks, Google.

~~~
mgkimsal
Yeah, notebook was one of the first times I was seriously starting to use a
3rd party service, then it was yanked. And now it's back, as 'keep'. And in
2-3 years it'll be gone again. And Reader will be back as some 'feature' in
Google Drive (or it'll be called 'Docs' again, or still remain as 'Docs' as
some of the google drive/docs pages still point out).

------
duggan
Merits of whether _Keep_ is comparable to _Reader_ aside - I wonder how long
we're going to be seeing the "...but Google Reader" refrain from pundits.

The camps of opinion I've seen on how Google should behave:

1) Pundits: Support an increasingly burdensome array of fringe services which
cost them more than they gain (in their opinion)

2) HN: Reduce their experimental forays and leave (for now) private/small
companies to their niches.

3) Coders: open source the services when shuttering.

1 and 2 would seem anathema to Google - the next Facebook could be hiding in
either the organizational lethargy created by the former or the failure to act
on the latter.

3 is going to be prohibitively expensive or difficult depending on how the
service was built.

I'm just not sure there's anything other than a lot of sound and fury in the
future of these discussions, which makes them boring.

~~~
tomkarlo
Reader generated a disproportionate media outcry because it was such a great
service for news junkies - and reporters in general tend to be news junkies.
The response was greatly disproportionate when compared to say, the shutdown
of Posterous or even other Google service shutdowns over the years... I
suspect because of human nature, where reporters assume that everyone else is
like them and reads 100 publications a day.

Open sourcing it sounds great, but folks are saying that with zero knowledge
of what the service actually looks like under the hood. I can only think
they're assuming it looks like a common web service stack like LAMP or rails
or something that would actually make sense to anyone if they got the code.

------
ishansharma
I fully agree with Om here. In fact, I have found myself avoiding Google
services as much as possible now. GMail is the only one I am using regularly
and which does not have good alternatives.

I also agree that Google is becoming like Microsoft, trying everything.

I'm going to stay with companies like Evernote.

~~~
mooreds
And the nice thing about gmail is that, if you had to move off of it, you
could (as long as they keep the imap interface around:
[http://webapps.stackexchange.com/questions/417/export-
gmail-...](http://webapps.stackexchange.com/questions/417/export-gmail-
messages-to-text-or-html-files) ).

There may be no feature complete alternatives, but there sure are a lot of
email readers out there if you had to move off of it.

~~~
benbeltran
As you do with google reader. You can fully export your feeds and move
elsewhere. At /least/ they're letting you keep your data. I'm not saying it
didn't feel like a dick move... but at least they make it easy to move away. I
already switched to another reader and I'm getting more used to it every day.
We may be emotionally attached, but the world moves on. How many of these
small companies you give money to give you the freedom to download your data?

~~~
mooreds
My understanding is that there are saved stories and meta data that you can't
export from google reader (mostly based on comments on this thread
<https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=5371725> because I don't use Google
Reader and never have). Is my supposition incorrect?

~~~
zanny
The way they export your favorites / shares is just a json API that isn't
standard. Services will rapidly pick up importing from that format, but
besides the feed xml file none of what they give you is _that_ portable.

------
Draco6slayer
I don't see how dropping one product == become untrustworthy.

This is like if you went to the supermarket every day to buy milk, flour,
sugar, beans, and lettuce. And then the supermarket realises that it is
uneconomical for them to provide lettuce, so they drop it, but they do start
selling eggs. And you look at those eggs and say 'Yeah, Right. I'm not going
to buy those. I remember what happened to the lettuce.'

~~~
MaysonL
It's more like if Walmart opened one of its big stores in your small home town
and drove almost all of the smaller retailers for miles around out of business
and a few years later said "Oh, this location sucks." and closed up shop.

~~~
Draco6slayer
Only if it took one week for another shopowner to start up again, and they
gave 3 months notice. There was never even a cut in functionality; I'm already
using Feedly instead of Google Reader, and Reader's still going to be around
for another few months yet.

------
manicbovine
> The service that drives more traffic than Google+ was sacrificed because it
> didn’t meet some vague corporate goals; users — many of them life long — be
> damned.

I think this explains why Reader was killed... It competes with G+. Want
updates from your favorite website? Follow them on G+.

It's a turn away from open formats and interoperability.

------
hackernewbie
My impression of google from age ~15 was of a company who had balanced
profitability with genuine altruistic intent. They had so many products,
tools, services, libraries... everything and pretty much all of it was free
and freely available.

It hasn't really changed that much, but jesus, my perception has. Charging for
Google Maps was a warning sign, though it only really applied to companies,
fair game. Wave was flippant, it came and went too fast to understand the
gesture. Google Notes always needed some love and attention it was never going
to get.

But Google Reader? It was/is uniquely useful. Widely supported, widely loved,
widely used (as far as I can tell). It was the kind of thing that made me feel
Google had your best interests at heart, I can't imagine it made them much
money.

Just to clarify, I'm not upset about Google Reader, far from it
<http://theoldreader.com/> looks entirely capable of picking up the slack.
It's just upsetting to see a company that I really thought was different is
just a company with margins and directives and the rest. I guess I'm an idiot.

------
utopkara
Does anybody remember Google Notebook? It did almost exactly what Keep does.

I used notes extensively, and one day... You know the drill.

Good luck to those who will jump on Keep. After notebook, I switched to
MacJournal, it works great for me, and I am not thinking of switching to an
online alternative. There are other tools that are better suited for keeping
stuff, such as DevonThink (check Macupdate Promo).

~~~
utopkara
To give you a sense of how important the notes were for me: I kept all the
literature search for my thesis research, and my reviews in notes. Thankfully,
they let me download the stuff I had in there. But, the data was useless in
itself.

------
marcamillion
So this is the ugly side of "ship fast, ship often".

At some point, when you have a ton of resources and people are shipping
products out the wazoo.....you have to kill products. When you kill products,
you lose confidence for future product announcements and skew your engagement
numbers.

What is a company like Google to do, when their larger products command most
of their resources?

------
angryasian
the tech community is curious sometimes. When a startup pivots, for a chance
for something better its celebrated. When Kevin Rose shuts down oink cause it
doesn't meet his initial expectations its applauded. Yet everyone wants to
speculate how important Reader was to a vocal few (only google knows active
user number) and they are the bad guy for possibly shutting down a niche
service for a few to focus on bigger ambitions. Export and maybe one of the
newer products are better, yet no one wants to event try that and would rather
attack a reasonable business decision.

~~~
senthilnayagam
If a start up does not pivot it potentially dies, but google with its multi
billion dollar revenue and infrastructure can keep it alive . They won't do
it, because they don't get it.

G+ is a failure, as was wave and so many others from google stable. But G+ is
important to this one guy, he is willing to sacrifice everything for this one.

~~~
angryasian
but I think you proved my point. How many dead end services can google
continue at their scale before it starts hurting much like microsoft ? Google
kills things quickly and tries something new. I applaud them on taking this
mindset. G+ is far from a failure. The only people that say this are people
that haven't tried it yet

~~~
senthilnayagam
People don't live in ghost town. Facebook has won agree that gracefully

~~~
p_l
FB is a ghost town for me, despite having bigger amount of "friends" there
than on G+...

The difference is that the occasional _content_ on FB is utterly lost between
tons of "apps" and ads, to the point that I can count the amount of times I
visited FB in 2012 on fingers.

FB's last "pro" is Messenger... which I use actually to talk to only one
person.

------
msprague
I hope this satire.

They discontinued Reader and added a new feature to Drive. Get over it. If you
don't like it, don't use it.

------
WalterSear
They've lost a lot of goodwill with this action.

~~~
ktsmith
I'm going to miss reader as much as anyone but it just seems like a buch of
spoiled brats with a sense of entitlement whining at this point. Reader was
provided as a free service. Google is shutting it down and giving everyone
enough time to find an alternate service and access their OPML data via
takeout. While some things may be lost forever via their article caching,
Google doesn't owe anything to the Reader user base.

~~~
yew
Of course, the Reader use base doesn't owe anything to Google. If Google isn't
playing the game of social obligations, talking about 'entitlement' won't get
them very far.

------
shoopy
In order to have me as a user, you're going to maintain this until the heat
death of the universe. I don't care if it's free! I deserve it!

------
triplesec
This is the fundamental problem for _any_ cloud services. You don't know if a
small company like Evernote is going to go bust, too, and many have, sometimes
bought to kill by Google and its ilk. So it's no safer than using large
company products. And if not Evernote, some other service you once used, like
say delicious. Or they don't update it as fast, and it gets clunky, like
flickr (not coincidentally both bought and ruined by yahoo)

For real security of data and use: either

1\. Download and install with local storage only

2\. whatever service you do use, save all the things locally frequently, in
multiple open data formats.

------
nicholassmith
Without going into the whole debate of 'why should I use it when they're just
going to Reader it?', does anyone else think this is a massive PR strategy
failure? Seriously, the worst time to announce a product must be just after
you've decided to shut one down that has a, granted not overwhelmingly large,
vocal user base currently flogging the company on all platforms.

Super bad timing, the product is tainted with negativity already, if they'd
given it even a fortnight to die off it'd be a much better play.

------
fpgeek
Anyone in the "Just let me pay for Reader" brigade (I'm not sure whether or
not Om is a member, though it seems likely given the "How much would you pay"
poll I saw on one of his posts) has no basis for complaining about Keep.

Keep, unlike Reader, is a paid service. A big point of Keep is to encourage
people to use Drive - a storage service you pay for, once you fill up your
introductory tier (keeping audio notes might help with that).

~~~
mcintyre1994
I'm not sure Keep lets you actually store an audio note. I believe it's just
speech to text. Of course nothing stops you dropping a recorded note into
Drive, but I don't think the Keep interface supports them.

EDIT: Looks like it both transcribes and keeps the audio available.
[http://howto.cnet.com/8301-11310_39-57575465-285/get-
started...](http://howto.cnet.com/8301-11310_39-57575465-285/get-started-with-
google-keep/)

------
RexRollman
Personally, I have grown weary of the Google intelligence umbrella. I recently
closed my Google account, as my CR-48 finally died, and moved my email to
another company. I use Evernote for my notekeeping and Flickr for photos. I
use Google only for search these days.

Now, would it be nice to have all of that under one company? Sure, but there
are too many privacy issues when doing so under Google.

------
Heliosmaster
You are also welcome to stop using Google Search, Gmail (and contacts), Google
Drive/Documents, Google+, Google Calendar, and YouTube, ...

Because, you know, they are from the same company responsbile for the demise
of Google Reader, and the less you get DEPENDENT on them, the least you will
suffer from the demise of another product as this.

Or you can move on.

~~~
xradionut
There's alternatives to all of the Google services, although some will be
harder to replace in the short term than others.

In terms of usefulness, Reader, as an information sieve, is a tool that saved
me hours a week. If Google had offered a paid version to keep Reader going
instead of shutting Reader down, I would have paid. Now I don't trust any
"free" service they offer to be there in the long term. I guess Google "free"
isn't "free". Explains why both OSS and commercial software(with long term
agreements) are better choices.

------
hrayr
I pride myself on being very calm and patient, even while my 9 month old is
screaming in my ear and smashing the keyboard while I try to type this.

I don't normally comment much, and when I do I try not to be negative. One
thing I discovered in the last few days is that I have absolutely no patience
for whining, especially when coming from grown man. This post, and a lot of
comments around here sound like whining to me. These are my feelings regarding
the recent Google Reader news and the comments surrounding it..

I want to be clear, I know why people are pissed off, some are angry because
their beloved product was taken away, and for some, their trust was broken,
perhaps more than once. It has certainly struck a nerve, and I want to have
these conversations, but something about the tone of the people has really
turned me off.

</end of whine>

------
cinbun8
Why stop with Google Reader and Keep ? The article seems to suggest that just
because Google pulled the plug on Reader that it will pull the plug on _any_
product it releases. Yes pulling down Reader was a bad idea but this is an
overreaction.

------
T_T
Question I would ask: How would you feel if Google acquired Feedly tomorrow?

Reason I ask: Google scrapped Notebook
(<http://www.google.com/googlenotebook/faq.html>) a while back, and has now
released Google Keep. To me, this is a tear down and rebranding. I can't speak
to the reason of it, but I would guess Google Keep already has more users than
Notebook did. I can't speak for Google, but I certainly know their goal is not
to lose 500k users to Feedly. My guess being, they likely want to take the
smoothest, but also cheapest, way out of a product that they can no longer
maintain.

------
dewiz
My two cents: trust only apps that allows to export 100% of your data, or even
better saves your data in an open format accessible through API.

At the end of the day it is not about Google or Microsoft or Evernote, but
about not losing data You created.

------
zaptheimpaler
Is it just me or did Google become a lot more focused on monetization and a
lot less on protecting the open web and making great products as soon as
Marissa Mayer left?

------
kercker
If Google keep creating new things, how can it manage so many products?
Killing some old products is a good option for them, though bad for users.

~~~
johnpowell
I think part of the reader problem is that, like me, many people think of
reader as a few servers on the bottom of a rack at a huge datacenter. Just a
few blinking lights next to the floor that nobody thinks about or has to
really do anything to keep them blinking.

I'm sure people worked on it but in the grand scheme of things it was a drop
in the bucket.

------
vzhang
If Google kills Reader, <http://ifGoogleKillsReader.tumblr.com/>

------
HugoDias
I just have an image for you: <http://cl.ly/image/2K2X1U1X0g2r>

------
abalone
Hey you know what would be super xtra cool? If this Keep thing let you keep
clipping links, like, automatically, from the same site, whenever new stuff is
published, into your Google Drive(TM), which is super cool b/c it syncs down
to your computer so you can read those clips offline... OH NEVERMIND.

------
hacker_beta
People that want reader are not using +. It's awesome! And any way I can
increase ROI on my Adwords I support. If google can suggest my brand more
often to the proper peeps based off data collected that means greater sales
for me. Know the user!

------
curiousfiddler
If at this point Google reinstates Reader, I can tell you they will win many
hearts and goodwill. I don't remember a product being brought back from grave
and if they were to do it, they will be viewed as a genuinely considerate
company (IMO).

~~~
dombili
I'd be extremely surprised if they reinstate Reader. They'd only reinstate it
if they genuinely didn't expect this much of an outcry, but I'm sure they did.
Google knew that Reader was a product mostly used by tech savvy people and it
was obvious that people were gonna criticize Google over this decision
(rightly so). Hard part is almost over for them anyway. There are some people
who lost respect to Google and some of them always gonna be skeptical before
using any of Google's products (I'm one of them), but they'll be in the
minority and I'm sure Google doesn't give a fuck about them anyway.

------
fmitchell0
Give it to me for freeeeee!!!!

But listen to me when I tell you how to run your service that costs money.

Riiiiigghhhttt.

------
donniezazen
It is absurd to expect a business to not to shift its priorities.

Google did more harm to RSS technology by letting it deteriorate over years.
Now that it's gone, I am very hopeful that RSS will evolve and deliver content
in better and new ways.

~~~
ChrisLTD
Most businesses are singularly focused and don't shift priorities. Think
restaurants, stores, manufacturers, even small software companies. Only large
companies can even afford to think about shifting priorities rather than
staying laser focused on their original mission.

------
jemeshsu
For those who are upset by Reader shutdown and want more, check out Schemer
<https://www.schemer.com>, a site that is more strategic than Reader to
Google.

------
Tactic
Expecting services to continue forever is like expecting that you will never
be laid off.

It is a rude awakening when it happens, but it should hardly be surprising for
anyone that has been around for a while.

------
v-yadli
The latent support for this post: you won't lose Evernote 7 years later.

But who knows?

~~~
ChrisLTD
The question is whether or not that's more or less likely than Keep being
around for that same amount of time. In Om's mind that balance has clearly
shifted.

------
tlogan
RSS reader on the side I dont get the idea of Google Keep. It does not seem
the notes are saved to Google Drive. Can I access them offline? Are they
sync'd with my phone?

------
bradgessler
Evernote isn't exactly an angel. They butchered Skitch into a buggy piece of
software that barely works.

~~~
whatshisface
I think the point is they don't _have_ to be an angel for you to trust them.
If they were to do what Google is doing now, they would loose a tremendous
amount of money. I think we all trust them to not want to loose money.

------
creativityland
Google Plus. Google Plus. Google Plus.

------
imperialdrive
Keep is great - this is music to my ears... since buying a Nexus 4 I couldn't
believe there wasn't a built-in app for notes, and I don't feel like paying
for such a simple tool (sorry evernote) so I was using Gtasks... now that this
is out, I'm happy (for now) still... damn u google for the inability to use BT
and WIFI at the SAME TIME on a Nexus!!!!

~~~
jck
ever note has a free version.

------
brianhc
First impression: Keep needs drag and drop photo uploading.

------
EFathy
The man got a point!

------
andyl
Before Google+ came along, Google had many great products and embraced the
OpenWeb. Now Google has abandoned Open Standards like RSS and CalDAV, and I
think Google is more interested in building their own walled garden.

~~~
mindcrime
Bingo. It's _very_ unfortunate too, as Google were uniquely positioned to be
great defenders of the Open Web. Who else has the clout to do it now, as well
as the motivation? Does anybody see Marissa moving Yahoo that way? I'm
guessing "no" but would love to be proven wrong. It won't be Microsoft, you
can bet on that. Red Hat are a moderately powerful company, but they aren't
_that_ big and could wind up acquired by Oracle tomorrow for all we know. And
they aren't that into services and web-apps. Mozilla have a lot of clout on
the browser side, but arguably much less so than in years past, as their
market share has slipped.

Amazon? Nope, don't see them stepping up to defend the Open Web.

Facebook? Hell no.

LinkedIn? No.

Sun? Maybe if they hadn't been acquired by Oracle.

IBM? Maybe not totally ridiculous, but history doesn't paint the best picture
of IBM in this regard. And they also don't really offer services over the web,
like a search engine. Maybe they could scale Watson up to webscale and make
that the new Google?

Wolfram? No.

DuckDuckGo? Right spirit, but I don't think they are influential enough.

Opera? Not influential enough.

Canonical? No.

Novell? Eh, no.

HP? No.

This isn't looking too promising.... :-(

Edit: Duh, I missed a big one! The Wikimedia Foundation! They are probably one
of the strongest backers of the Open Web, and definitely have a little bit of
influence, thanks to WIkipedia and related projects.

~~~
AJ007
I think there is a compelling case Microsoft should move in the other
direction. Will they have the right leadership in the future to do this, I
don't know. Microsoft is not a lost cause.

I came of age as an active Slashdot reader. At that time Microsoft was seen as
an arch villain that could do nothing but evil. Curiously, today Google has a
far deeper and more chilling degree of influence far beyond what Microsoft
had. Microsoft had a monopoly on an open platform, Google knows everything
public about you, a lot of private stuff too, possibly can run facial
recognition of you against every picture on the internet, and wants to also be
able to predict what you are about to do. And they have a monopoly on online
advertising. Unelected regulators and elected representatives are terrified of
Google. Google has gotten a blank slate pretty much to do what they want,
perhaps from a national security standpoint alone.

Google today, makes the Microsoft of yesterday look like a used child's toy.

I see the attitude toward any dominant government or corporation as a pretty
good thermostat toward a group's value of freedom and openness, and quite
frankly the free pass Google gets here (relative to Microsoft in 1998) is
disturbing.

~~~
jan_g
>Google today, makes the Microsoft of yesterday look like a used child's toy.

I agree with you completely with regards to privacy and all the information
that Google has about users. However, the difference is that Microsoft of
yesterday had a stranglehold on users' choice. It was really hard to be
productive by NOT using windows operating system and the whole ecosystem that
came with it.

Today you don't want Google search? Use Bing or ddg. Gmail? There are
countless other free webmail providers. Google+? You have Facebook, Twitter
and so on. Youtube? DailyMotion, Metacafe, etc. Android phones? You have iOS,
WP8 devices.

While Google really is very powerful, one still has good alternatives.

------
yanw
This is ridiculous. How hard is it to import an OPML file into any of the
other feed services that already exist on the web, or those popping up
everyday. Do we really need to keep regurgitating this story?! it's been
dominating the front page for a week now.

Here are the differences between Reader and Keep: Reader was an abandoned and
an unclaimed product, kept on life support. Keep is a feature of Drive, a
product which actually is acknowledged to be under someone's management

I hope Evernote will exist as it is now forever and that the author won't have
eat his words someday.

~~~
jcampbell1
Google served a giant turd sandwich to a bunch of journalists by closing
Reader. Now Google is eating the shit it created. Google is going to continue
eating shit until they grovel.

Unfortunately for Google, no one is responsible for closing Reader, thus no
one will step up to the plate and fix this PR disaster.

There is a clear path to fix this mess, and I guarantee no one at Google has
the humility to fix the problem.

~~~
yanw
It's hardly a PR disaster or a mess needs cleaning. It's just some pissy folks
that are taking a little longer to get over it. It'll pass I'm just tired of
hearing about it.

~~~
jcampbell1
How long to you have to be tired of hearing about it before you admit it is a
PR mess?

If the Google reader closing is mentioned in new Google product announcements
a month from now, will you admit this was a PR disaster? How about a year from
now?

Google needs to grovel to get their hands around this. By admitting mistake,
they can actually redirect the message to something positive.

BTW, I agree with you completely. It is trivial for me to switch services, and
I am tired of hearing about it. That being said, Google is eating its own shit
sandwich. Google has no one to blame but themselves.

~~~
yanw
Really, groveling? yeah if anyone mentions Reader in a month's time it will be
an issue. It's not a main new story, and Google won't get anything back by
reversing their decision, the damage is already done. Some people are being
overly dramatic and hypersensitive, they'll realize that and they'll get over
it, as always.

~~~
joedevon
Forget about "Reader" per se. Given that Google has sunsetted so many products
recently, would you bet a key part of your small business infrastructure on an
Evernote-killer by Google, or would you prefer to pay a company for Evernote?

------
psbp
Is this also a warning to Evernote to never remove features? I'd hate to be a
company that makes products that Om uses.

~~~
taligent
I don't know any company who would remove features that millions of people use
every single day.

~~~
fpgeek
Yes, you only know a company that would remove a feature hundreds of millions
of people use every day, from a product they've paid for to boot (see: Apple
Maps).

