
Readability service to become free - andycroll
http://blog.readability.com/2011/11/reading-needs-a-platform-introducing-the-new-readability/
======
bproper
Unlike Marco Arment and Instapaper, Readability will now give their app away
for free.

Founding partner Rich Ziade says the company is still "figuring out" their
business model.

But the parser Readability created under the Apache license is being used by
Apple and Amazon in millions of devices, neither of which pays a dime in
licensing fees to this small startup.

He talks about it here - [http://www.betabeat.com/2011/11/16/readability-
focuses-on-fr...](http://www.betabeat.com/2011/11/16/readability-focuses-on-
free-aiming-to-enlarge-its-platform/)

Readabilities dream of a long form "slow" web that rewards publishers is
noble, but they would be better equipped to build it if they had secured their
business model early on.

~~~
naner
_Founding partner Rich Ziade says the company is still "figuring out" their
business model._

That sounds ominous.

 _But the parser Readability created under the Apache license is being used by
Apple and Amazon in millions of devices, neither of which pays a dime in
licensing fees to this small startup._

Yup. That is what the Apache license is for. I'm a huge fan of open source but
when you choose a license like that you should prepare yourself for the
possibility that most people will use your code in the most unhelpful and
exploitative way possible.

I'm using something called "Enjoy Reading" for Firefox (which also uses
readability's code) since I'd rather have the formatting all happen in
javascript without trying to access a remote server. It's quicker and I don't
have to worry about whether or not they are logging every article I read.

~~~
kenneth_reitz
The parser we're using now is not based on that JavaScript codebase at all.
It's excellent to it being used in so many ways now, though.

We're all about making reading better on the web.

~~~
grayrest
Are you using the lxml port or did you guys rewrite it again?

~~~
kenneth_reitz
A completely rewritten stack. It's continually improving — one of our biggest
efforts.

We do heavily utilize lxml though.

~~~
albertogh
Given the number of articles I guess you're processing each day, I think you
should probably rewrite your parser in C. I used to run a service which
basically consisted on a feed reader where every article was preprocessed by
an algorithm similar to readability. I wrote the parser using lxml and it
looked fast enough, but when I started running on the 400K-500K pages per day
territory I started having performance problems. Since parsing the pages is
easily paralelizable across multiple machines, I could have just rented some
more servers. But where's the fun in that? So I sat in front of the computer
and 4 hours later I had a C implementation which passed all the testsuite and,
according to valgrind, didn't have any memory leaks. As soon as I deployed it
into production, CPU and memory usage dropped by something like 10x (don't
remember the exact number) and I was able to remove some servers and bring the
costs down. Sadly, I had to close that project because I was spending too much
time on it compared to the revenue it was generating, but it was so much fun
while it lasted.

~~~
pjscott
Another anecdote: I was writing an HTML-to-text converter. The prototype used
lxml and some custom DOM-traversal and formatting logic in Python. I got about
a 17x speedup from porting the thing to use C and libxml2 (the parser that
lxml uses). The port to C took most of an afternoon, and it's currently
chewing through a _lot_ of HTML without a problem.

~~~
JonnieCache
I can confirm that libxml2 is indeed great.

------
abrowne
I keep bouncing between Readability and Readable[1].

One thing I like about Readability is that it's not affected by saved zoom
levels because it displays the converted page on its own domain. For example,
if I have BBC News at 120% zoom – remembered by Chrome – Readability is still
at 100% – or whatever I've set it to – whereas Readable uses 120% zoom.

[1]: <http://readable.tastefulwords.com/>

~~~
gala8y
I've been using Readability legacy bookmarklet, but was never happy being
redirected to their domain. Thanks for link to Readable.

~~~
abrowne
On Chrome there's also the Readability Redux extension[1], which uses the old
bookmarklet's code with a toolbar button.

[1]:
[https://chrome.google.com/webstore/detail/jggheggpdocamneaac...](https://chrome.google.com/webstore/detail/jggheggpdocamneaacmfoipeehedigia)

------
andycroll
Looks like a movement toward being a direct competitor to Instapaper.

~~~
priteau
Unless it changed recently, Marco Arment, the creator of Instapaper, is an
advisor to Arc90, the company behind Readability
(<http://www.marco.org/2011/02/01/readabilitys-new-service>)

~~~
DTSmith
Marco is not currently listed in the advisor team at the bottom of their about
page (<https://www.readability.com/about>). Would seem like a conflict at this
point and makes sense for them to move in separate directions.

------
lowglow
I developed this exact same tech earlier this year. It was a pain trying to
analyze all the MANY different ways people can screw up html, but the success
rate is pretty high across the net. I've been thinking of making it opensource
since I no longer use it.

~~~
donohoe
Please do.

------
tel
I can't consider leaving Instapaper until Readability sends things to my
Kindle weekly. Without that feature I'm unlikely to bookmark in Readability
but quite likely to using Instapaper. I don't see how it can be done with the
paywall they've set up, though.

~~~
kenneth_reitz
We can send things to your Kindle daily.

~~~
tel
Indeed you can :) Anecdotally, I didn't notice that capacity until you
mentioned it here, though.

------
Torn
For a site named 'readability', the font they're using seems awfully thin and
spidery. I need to selecting the text to comfortably read it, and my eyesight
isn't bad.

Is it just me, or are anti-aliased web fonts these days _harder_ to read than
their normal equivalents?

------
gizzlon
I like readability and their idea that profit should go back to the publisher.
But they never really tell you how this is suppose to work. As far as I can
tell, each publisher has to register with readability to see any money.
Clearly not "web scale" :)

~~~
stdbrouw
Actually, most bigger publishers and quite a few bloggers are already signed
up with Readability, because it's just set-and-forget.

Also: "Yes, Readability keeps track of the last twelve months of pages visited
even before a publisher registers with us to view their statistics. If your
site has garnered traffic to Readability, we're already earmarking money for
you."

~~~
gizzlon
Cool, but how do you know who signed up?

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nc
This is better than Instapaper.

~~~
w1ntermute
Definitely, NTM Marco's childish anti-Android bias is just stupid. Like it or
not, Android has the largest chunk of the smartphone market, and not
supporting it out of an ideological bias is absurd.

For related reasons, it appears that the Readability app has only been
released on iOS at the moment. I have no idea why on earth you would do this,
but whatever. As long as they eventually release an Android app, the problem
will be solved.

~~~
avolcano
There is no "anti-Android bias." Marco is one man, and does not want to make
and support an Android app in addition to making a web app, iOS app, and the
backend to support the two.

There is also not a good profit motive for him. Android users, on average, not
only use fewer apps, but especially _buy_ fewer apps - very few paid apps on
Android are as successful as iOS counterparts.

As for Readability, I use the excellent mobile web app. I will check out the
iOS app, I suppose, but for Android phones the web app should be fine.

~~~
fpgeek
I agree that Marco's decision not to develop an Instapaper app for Android
doesn't itself reflect an anti-Android bias. There are plenty of good reasons
that could be behind that decision.

However, if you think Marco himself isn't full of anti-Android bias and
contempt, you haven't been paying attention. Check out his Twitter feed. Or
his blog. Aaron Pressman at The Orange View has captured more than a few
examples (as have others, I'm sure).

Marco likes to talk about how he hasn't seen a good Instapaper Android app and
how that "proves" there's no market for him on Android (conveniently
dismissing the official ReadItLater app, not to mention the pile of apps using
the ReadItLater API that preceded it).

Personally, I think there's a much simpler explanation: Any developer working
on an Instapaper Android app couldn't help coming across Marco's opinions on
Android. At that point, I'd expect most good Android developers would decide
that they had better things to do than to writing an app for a platform their
API provider hates.

------
andrewfelix
Much of web would be so much more pleasant if article based sites were
formatted from the get go like they are in Readability. I would gladly put up
with one or two ads and they would more likely get my attention.

------
kleiba
I wish there was a browser plugin that makes every web page appear as if run
through Readability/Readable by default. Of course, it would be nice if it was
really snappy, too.

------
pfui
would be nice if they provided readability as a library or a documented API
for third-parties.

~~~
kenneth_reitz
We do!

<http://www.readability.com/publishers/api>

We also offer a Content API for getting the content of articles. Send us an
email for more info.

~~~
wslh
Is the API now free?

~~~
kenneth_reitz
Yes — as always :)

------
sjs
I already have and use Instapaper. What reasons are there to start using
Readability instead?

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level09
Apple is already killing these 3rd party services (readability,instapaper etc
..) they have a readability button in their latest safari for ios5 alongside
with a reading list. hence the decision the make it free ..

iMessage was another attempt to kill whats app, I won't be surprised if
instagram is next.

~~~
kenneth_reitz
Not at all.

Apple's service is useful, but it's only an aggregated list of your own links
to read. Open one on iOS, and it opens the full webpage. Far from ideal.

It's excellent to see them contributing to online reading, though. The
'Reader' Safari feature is based on our code, actually! (we're in the license
page).

------
arpit
Free service and free apps? Whats the business model?

~~~
berberich
I'm wondering the same thing. Their original business model of splitting
revenue with the authors was interesting, but I'm guessing they didn't get
many subsribers.

I was interested in supporting them, but because I already support Marco @
Instapaper with a monthly donation, the Readability subscription (was it $5 or
$7 per month) wasn't worth it for myself.

~~~
stdbrouw
It's still their business model, they've had a free version and a premium
version (w/ the revenue split) for quite a while now, and it doesn't seem like
this announcement changes that. Somebody correct me if I'm wrong, but I think
the big change is that the apps are now free too, or maybe that some premium
features have become available to everyone.

~~~
kenneth_reitz
Correct, that is still the business model.

You couldn't have an account at all without paying before. Now, you can sign
up for an account for free. With that includes a 30-article Reading List,
(optionally) public profile, and access to the apps (device syncing, &c).

Premium users also get Archives, an Unlimited Reading List (mine has 1000+
articles in it), daily Kindle digests, and —of course— the warn fuzzy feeling
of supporting the writers that create the content you enjoy.

The list is likely to grow in the future.

