
Lockdown - mh_
http://www.marco.org/2013/07/03/lockdown
======
josteink
This has to be the first ever Marco post I've read which didn't leave me
wanting to toss sharp items at my monitors.

I actually fully agree with him on this. The open web is increasingly being
threatened and locked down. We need to oppose that.

~~~
esolyt
It's ironic though, that this post is coming from Macro. He hates Chrome (open
source and free software) and uses Safari. He hates Android (open source and
free software) and uses and develops for iOS.

I sense hypocrisy.

~~~
smackfu
"Hates Chrome"? I haven't noticed that. Most Mac users use Safari.

~~~
esolyt
The point is, he has open source and free alternatives to Safari, that are
equally good or arguably better. If he really cares about openness, I wonder
why it hasn't influenced his decision.

~~~
smackfu
I don't really see it as that terribly inconsistent to care more about open
protocols and open content than about open source software for your personal
use.

~~~
esolyt
Maybe not. But it's hypocritical of him to not criticize Apple for pushing for
an app-oriented mobile experience and using patents to block the progress of
HTML5 APIs.

------
mmahemoff
_" It was just running, quietly serving a vital role for a lot of people."_

Yes, but it wasn't in Google's commercial interest. Running Reader as a "side
project" is not just distracting to senior management, but also creates legal,
technical, and reputation risks which can bite back on their much larger
businesses.

It's hard for most of us to comprehend, but ready-made revenues of a few
million bucks, even if it was $100M (unlikely), is not of interest to Google
unless it's growing fast. Which RSS, isn't.

Welcome to Extremistan. Black Swans like Google do things that aren't
intuitive.

 _" The bigger problem is that they’ve abandoned interoperability. RSS,
semantic markup, microformats, and open APIs all enable interoperability"_

Yes. This is indeed the direction Google has been moving, and it's a problem
for those of us who enjoyed an open web, as users _and_ developers.

Google tried to combat Facebook with open standards and it didn't work.
OpenSocial, if anyone remembers, was a huge effort by Google which would have
the effect of commoditising Facebook's functionality. They put themselves on
the line by partnering with many other companies, and it failed to slow
Facebook down.

They tried with other standards too, e.g. PubSubHubbub, WebFinger. Most people
have never heard of them.

There's no conspiracy theory needed here. Google tried with Reader too, for 8
years. It just didn't take off. Most people found it too hard and found
Facebook + Twitter way easier. Not the kind of people who read HN, but the
kind of people who are too busy to figure out what seem like trivial
technologies to early adopter types.

So yes, Marco is absolutely correct that Google's becoming a company that,
like Facebook, is more interested in bringing developers in _after_ their
products have gained traction with users. This is also how Apple has acquired
so much interest from developers; they didn't open source their OS, they
didn't spend years constructing open standards for mobile apps. They just
built a hugely popular OS and developers came running.

All of this is _related to_ Google Reader, all of this is true. BUT there's no
causation here, as much as some people want to believe it. Reader didn't take
off because most people didn't use it. For a giant company focused on growth,
that's all the reason you need to turn it off.

~~~
nemesisj
"Yes, but it wasn't in Google's commercial interest. Running Reader as a "side
project" is not just distracting to senior management, but also creates legal,
technical, and reputation risks which can bite back on their much larger
businesses."

You know, I've seen this statement on almost every thread about Google Reader,
and it seems to be one of those things that everyone is just giving a pass to.

Google's entire hiring and organisational model is (or at least should be)
predicated on hiring great people to get things done. This is how every well
run technical company operates. This idea that we all need "senior management
attention" or "product manager" love is something that comes out of
dysfunctional organisations without a shared vision. Could you imagine this
statement being made about some of the tech company darlings here (37Signals,
Github, Stripe etc.)?

If you're going to put a product in maintenance mode (or even slow growth)
with a team who understands it, you don't need senior management attention
from on high.

Also, the reputational risk is just a laughable statement to make. Look what
happened reputationally just now - that's not going to go away any time soon
and you better believe that it was much worse than someone coming along later
and saying "Oh no, Google reader is so unchanged from 3 years ago, I hate
Google." Anecdotally, I don't even know anyone who uses Google Reader
directly, they all have dedicated apps.

All these arguments are poor. Or, at best, if they're true, they signal that
Google has really lost its way - it's now a behemoth organisation that
requires senior management oversight on every single product offering, and any
non-spectacular product could at any instant bring the entire organisation
down with its combination of toxic legal and toxic risk.

~~~
mmahemoff
It'd be manageable if Reader was the only small project they kept going, but
not if there are dozens of them, and there _have_ been dozens of them. Reader
is only one example among many small projects which Google has been shutting
down.

Some might protest that Reader _should_ be the exception, but Google is the
only one with the numbers, and I do believe Reader's popularity has been
amplified by the nature of its loyal users. It's unlikely a complaint from a
disgruntled SketchUp user is going to the top of HN.

"Also, the reputational risk is just a laughable statement to make. Look what
happened reputationally just now"

Most of my non-technical family and friends haven't even heard of Reader and
aren't aware of its shutdown. OTOH If Reader had some security leak that
caused people's GMails to be read, they'd certainly hear about it and Google's
seniors would be hauled into Congress or the EU to explain themselves.

At risk of sounding like a Google apologist, I don't believe Google has lost
its way when you look at their performance over the past couple of years. If
stock price is any indication, the all-time high (at a time when its rivals
have been flat or in decline) suggests the market doesn't feel that way
either.

~~~
nemesisj
The great thing about hypotheticals is we can make them without a basis in
reality. Your hypothetical regarding some Gmail leak is not really reasonable.

The fact is, many many Google services don't make money in and of themselves.
But they add value to the broader ecosystem as a whole.

Whether Google wanted to shut their service down is their business, but the
weird machinations that have been trotted out to justify (senior management
time, legal and technical risk, reputational risk) are really bizarre when
taken within the broader context of how Google does and should operate.

~~~
mmahemoff
It's not hypothetical. It's a real risk. You know, like a possible outcome has
a certain estimated probability of occurring.

Risk analysis is one of the things companies do when they make decisions.

No-one is justifying here. This is just a conjecture about why it's in their
interest to shut it down, contrary to impassioned arguments about how much
money they could make to keep it. It's not a "justification" because no moral
dimension has been mentioned here.

------
jwr
This was exactly what I thought when I heard about Google closing down Reader.
I'm glad Marco put this into a coherent article.

It is in Google's best interest to have RSS and individual blogs die.
Amusingly enough, it is also what Facebook wants, so the two giants are fully
alinged on this one.

About 6 months ago I quit Facebook and Google+, deciding to publish my stuff
on my pages and my blog alone, instead of throwing them into closed gardens. I
do not regret that decision, even though readership dropped significantly.

~~~
tejaswiy
I don't get it. Even if all of us RSS reading dinosaurs were to be forced into
the information age, we'd probably go to Twitter / Facebook and not G+.

So why exactly is the death of RSS in Google's best interest unless they're
actively trying to send users away to their competition ?

~~~
wmf
By their thinking that social is strategic, to admit that G+ can't win is to
admit that Google is dead.

------
zmmmmm
Well, for once I agree with Marco. But I find it a little strange coming from
him - he seemed to care not much about it at all when making his apps
exclusive to Apple's locked down, ultra closed platforms.

~~~
andycroll
...and the web.

Sure he didn't do an app for Android (until someone did for him) and is a bit
snarky about it as a platform, but the web version of Instapaper existed
before the app did and powered the whole thing.

Plus 'The Magazine' has a significant web component (albeit a weird log in).

His preference for iOS seems to be aesthetic and income related, but he's
originally (and still) a PHP web guy.

~~~
MBCook
> Plus 'The Magazine' has a significant web component (albeit a weird log in).

He discussed that at some point, I think it might have been on Accidental Tech
Podcast. As I remember the idea was that since The Magazine wasn't terribly
important (security wise) he could avoid having to give people another
username/password. He said it was something of an experiment and he probably
wouldn't do it again. I think Casey and Siracusa both said they found it odd
and confusing at first.

------
georgemcbay
Re: Google+

Is their overall strategy to drive adoption working these days? I know their
number of users must be quite large now, but AFAICT it is pretty much hugely
inflated by being a catch-all for anyone with any kind of Google account.

I actually like Google+ quite a bit and have a lot of people in my circles and
I'm in quite a lot of other people's circles, but I never actually go to
Google+ anymore (unless I'm following a link to some Linus post or something
from somewhere else) because it simply never hit the required critical mass of
actual mainstream usage for me to switch. Everyone I know and want to keep up
with IRL is still stuck on Facebook, ergo I'm stuck on Facebook even though I
don't particularly care for it. Even among the smallish subgroup of people I
know IRL who did embrace Google+ at first, they are virtually all like me now,
with accounts that scarcely ever get used.

I'm not sure what Google+ has to do to make converts of the masses, but at
least among my circles they aren't doing it currently despite whatever
collateral damage they are causing in trying to force people there.

~~~
mmahemoff
Google+ must be one of the most misunderstood things Google's ever done.

It's not supposed to be a social network like Facebook. The thing you see when
you visit G+ - people microblogging and sharing pics etc - is just a fraction
of the whole point of G+.

G+ is Google's social layer. In data terms, it turns people into "first-class
citizens" across Google's estate, instead of every project just shoehorning in
their own "user" structure. That's why you see G+ in Play reviews, YouTube
comments, integrated into email, and so on.

~~~
smackfu
That may be Google's internal philosophy, but their external face on it is a
service that looks just like Facebook, at the website plus.google.com, with a
title of Google+. They couldn't be trying any harder to make it misunderstood.

~~~
fudged71
The problem is that Google built it to function like Facebook, and once it was
released into the wild it was used more like a hybrid of Twitter and forums.
Maybe they dogfooded it wrong.

I'm increasingly feeling like the problem with Google+ is that it didn't start
with a minimum idea. They went straight for the concept of 'Facebook' and
didn't give users enough incentive to make the switch.

Maybe they could have made a "Facebook Export" importer to populate streams
with existing posts, friends, and photos. Maybe they could have made it more
social and personal.

Or maybe Facebook's momentum prevented people from actually making the switch.
Enough people are satisfied by Facebook that they wouldn't abandon it for a
couple of friends.

Google just didn't play the cards right, and I feel like Google+ has gotten
too complicated for anyone to just jump in and figure it out.

------
cnbuff410
Isn't it the same strategy Apple has been played all the time for its OS? And
looks like Marco Arment has been enjoying it quite a lot? There is no freedom
in terms of interoperability in your daily system and suddenly you are mad at
"losing it"?

~~~
chipotle_coyote
This seems to be a common snark whenever someone known for (gasp) using Apple
products complains about lack of openness. Because clearly these two things
are connected, except for the part about them not being connected at all.
(Frankly I have no idea what "no freedom in terms of interoperability in your
daily system" even means. What is it my Mac and iPad are failing to
interoperate with?)

If I construct a popular online social network, I could run it on Debian, code
it in Emacs, have all the source code on Github, genuflect to a picture of
Richard Stallman daily, _and still have no open APIs for users to interact
with their data._ If most major players on the Internet lock your data down,
then many common uses of the Internet will in a very real sense become
proprietary _even if it is running entirely on free software._

I'm sure it's _fun_ to smugly go "well, you use iOS so you should like closed
things," but it kinda betrays a significant distance between you and the
point.

~~~
cnbuff410
Really? "What is it my Mac and iPad are failing to interoperate with"? Can you
share your iCloud stuff with others not using Mac system?

Marco was blaming Google/Twitter/Facebook locking down devs/users in their own
eco-system and your point is you get the interoperability within Apple's own
garden? Come on.

BTW, you give a perfect example of what being hypocrite looks like. Sure, you
can enjoy your time by hosting a closed service on top of open source
infrastructure, that's hypocrite. You can also enjoy your time in a closed
eco-system ever since from day 1 with absolutely no interoperate and still
manage to find way to fuck those closed web based eco-system. That's also
hypocrite.

Interoperate means what? Choice and competition. I see no spirit of either in
Apple's eco-system. And somehow Marco always find a way to blame other
companies for that.

------
toyg
_> Then you spend twice as much time figuring out how to deal with poorly
crafted feeds, ambiguities, and edge cases — especially for Atom, which is a
huge, overengineered pain in the ass_

Funny: that's what most people said of RSS 0.x (poorly crafted), 1.x (over-
engineered) and 2.x (ambiguous and full of badly-specified edge-cases). Atom
was supposed to fix all that.

~~~
epaga
That's the problem with open standards, isn't it? (obligatory XKCD reference:
[http://xkcd.com/927/](http://xkcd.com/927/))

------
WA
The article reads as if RSS itself was dead. Come on guys, I know many of you
loved Google Reader, but it was just a damn client for RSS. There are millions
of RSS clients out there. Just use another one.

The article got that ass backward. With Google Reader, you were locked in
Google's ecosystem. Without Google Reader, you are free to use whatever RSS
client you can find.

I think the role of Google Reader for RSS is truly overrated but please show
me how I'm wrong.

~~~
itafroma
> With Google Reader, you were locked in Google's ecosystem. Without Google
> Reader, you are free to use whatever RSS client you can find.

This is (or was) a false dilemma. You could, with Google Reader, use a vast
multitude of RSS clients: you didn't have to use Google Reader proper. And,
because nearly everyone supported Google Reader as a common sync API, you
could switch between clients without losing your place or your data. Want to
try X flavor-of-the-month RSS app? No problem: just log in with your Google
account. Don't like it? No problem either: switch back to your other RSS
client and everything—even what articles you've read and starred—are right
where you left off.

Now, there's at least a half dozen competing and incompatible sync APIs and
numerous perfectly-adequate RSS clients rendered obsolete because they haven't
been updated to support other sync services. Because of the lack of a common
and ubiquitous sync API, choosing an RSS client now that Google Reader is gone
will be more locked down than before, at least for the foreseeable future.

Which is Marco's point: companies don't want you to be able to freely move
your data around. They want you to use their service. Yes, there's more
choice, but choosing one service over another winds up making it harder to
make a different choice down the line.

~~~
WA
Thanks a lot for clarification. I never used Google Reader and it wasn't clear
to me that the whole fuss was about the syncing API.

------
jmduke
I think it's interesting to note here that despite Facebook, Google, and
Twitter's best intentions, new social networks grow faster today than ever
before. Instagram, WhatsApp, and Snapchat exploded in a manner of weeks.

~~~
magic_haze
There was a great post a few weeks back here about why whatsapp, viber et al
had such a dramatic growth. Basically, the hypothesis was these apps have
access to the entirety of the user's contact data on their phones, which
allows them to reconnect with our friends automatically (or fallback to
sms/email). Ironically, I think this is something where Google+'s circles
could come in very useful for us (meaning, normal users): if Google stopped
pushing Plus as an end goal unto itself and instead started integrating it at
a lower level in android and provide APIs accessible to other websites, it
could have massive privacy and usability advantages for us. Cyanogenmod is
doing something similar, but I think they're implementing it as a everything-
or-nothing switch for apps. Providing more granularity (and seriously, Google
got the circles UI spot on, I'm very impressed) is something that's sorely
needed if we want to move away from facebook's monopoly on our social graph.

~~~
flyinRyan
>and seriously, Google got the circles UI spot on, I'm very impressed

I should hope they got circles right as it was the most obvious thing in
social networking ever. 30 seconds into my very first usage of facebook and I
already realized it was missing what google calls "circles".

------
hayksaakian
Good read, but it fizzled at the end.

Creating openness is not good enough. There were business reasons to support
every long lasting open technology, and with the dominance of proprietary
social media platforms, that business reason (for RSS at least) is dead.

The web opened up e commerce, and modern social media lowered the barrier to
entry for online communities.

Its the same problem cryptography has, if its not dead simple and obviously
useful don't expect it to stick around (at least at mass appeal)

~~~
bobbles
Yeah I was looking forward to reading through what he thought could be done to
try and turn the tide on the issue, but to essentially just write 'fuck y'all'
kinda made it feel like someone rambling on.

------
wyclif
_This plan is particularly problematic because Google+ is, relatively, a clear
failure so far_

An absurd statement on the face of it (even with the weasel-word qualifier),
given Google+'s large number of active users. In fact, given the traffic
there, I suspect his ridiculous Cupertino fanboism is to blame for not
considering Google+ a smashing success.

~~~
kryptiskt
Go to any article on the web with social media buttons, compare the number on
the Facebook, Twitter and Google buttons. One of them is one or two magnitudes
lower than the others, which?

~~~
wyclif
So Google+ is not nearly as big as Facebook. That much is obvious. But Marco
interprets that as "failure." Any service with 400 million active users is not
one I'd label that way.

------
olalonde
Conspicuously missing: any sort of criticism directed at Apple.

~~~
bruceboughton
No criticism of the NSA either... he must be a sympathiser.

~~~
olalonde
> [...] they want to lock you in, shut out competitors, and make a service so
> proprietary that even if you could get your data out, it would be either
> useless (no alternatives to import into) or cripplingly lonely [...]

It's very hard not to think of Apple when reading this sentence.

This article is about openness and interoperability, not about spying or
government agencies - not sure your analogy stands. Plus, I think it's a
pretty well known fact that Marco is indeed a sympathiser of Apple (hence the
"conspicuously missing" bit).

~~~
dasil003
It seems like you have an axe to grind. Apple is not germane because Apple is
not a major web player.

------
rounak
Find it strange that he doesn't once mention Apple, iMessage or iCloud, which
rank really low on the data interoperability front.

~~~
rahoulb
He does mention Apple in a footnote.

However, Apple doesn't really make claims about openness (apart from a brief
marketing push around OSX 10.2), whereas Twitter's success came from liberal
access to its API and Google makes a big deal out of its openness.

------
esolyt
An Apple fan complaining about Google not being "open" enough. Wow.

Remember everyone: "Open web" is very important! But your browser itself
doesn't need to be open source. Use Safari instead of Chrome. Your OS doesn't
need to be open source either. Use and develop for OSX. Use and develop for
iOS. Refuse developing for Android and make iOS-exclusive apps. Buy all Apple
products and support Apple. Then open a blog to advocate openness and bash
companies that build open source tools.

~~~
smackfu
Pretty much the definition of ad hominem here.

~~~
esolyt
My argument is that he is an hypocrite. I'm not trying to disprove his
argument. In fact I agree with it 100%.

------
tlrobinson
You'd think they could at least have slowly integrated Reader with their G+
vision rather than alienating a good portion of the users who have championed
them for years.

~~~
ecspike
They did slowly integrate some parts of Reader into Google+ and it was met
with resistance.

Google+ Sparks was a kind of RSS/StumbleUpon thing. Flopped.

Reader sharing became sharing into Google+. Many in the Reader crew defiantly
cried out against it and said they wouldn't share things if they had to use
Google+ to do it.

It wouldn't have been all roses no matter how you cut it.

I think people are in the bargaining phase of dealing with their post-Reader
era grief.

~~~
MatthewPhillips
Sparks didn't have RSS... did it?

------
hanspeide
Is this worth reading? Whenever I see marco.org I think to myself: "Apple
love, Google hate as usual" and move on.

~~~
wyclif
Yes, it's true his fanboism shows through when you see him call Google+, a
service with 400 million active users, a "failure." If that's failure, then
please let me fail.

~~~
jessaustin
It wouldn't be a failure for you or me. Google started out with far more
active users than that, so they have to be judged on a different basis. They
shut off other services to force those users into G+, and significant numbers
of those users posted a couple of times and then never looked at G+ again.
_Something_ about Google's actions turned them from regular G-Reader users
into regular users of non-Google services. That smells like failure.

If you think Marco is a particularly rabid fanboi, congratulations on your
sheltered and privileged life. Apple fanbois get _much_ worse than that.

~~~
slantyyz
>> If you think Marco is a particularly rabid fanboi, congratulations on your
sheltered and privileged life. Apple fanbois get much worse than that.

I'm not a fan of Marco, but you're right. If Marco really was a rabid fanboi,
more than half of his blog would be pointless claim chowder posts.

------
psionides
The thing I don't understand is that for me, Twitter and Facebook aren't a
competition for blogs and RSS. They're different things and they're
complementary.

Twitter and Facebook are for posting links to things you've found or
broadcasting short messages up to a few sentences. Twitter is for doing those
things publicly, Facebook is for doing those things within the circle of your
friends.

Blogs (and RSS) are for posting longer pieces of text, articles and such
things. When you want to post an article, you don't put it on Twitter (for
obvious reasons) or Facebook (because it limits your audience), you put it on
your blog (self-hosted or on a service like Blogger or Wordpress) and you post
links to it to Twitter and/or Facebook. And when you want to invite your
friends to a movie, you don't post that to your blog, you post that on
Facebook.

So I'm not worried that Twitter and Facebook don't have RSS feeds - I wouldn't
even want to see my friends' FB posts when I'm reading longer articles in my
RSS reader. And I'm not worried about Facebook killing blogs and RSS - yes,
most people post stuff on Facebook and not on their blogs, but that's because
most people don't write anything that would resemble an article.

(I do agree though that Twitter should have _some_ open API for getting
someone's public tweets in a machine-readable form, but it doesn't have to be
RSS, JSON is just fine.)

------
netcan
The type of interactions that Facebook focused on are naturally inclined to be
closed. You need to manage who sees what. BTW this was a revolution that got
the late adopters online and got people comfortable using their own names.

Anyway, my point is that this isn't a conspiracy. Google+ might have all sorts
of potential for moneymaking but its not google's main business at this point.
This trend towards more closed systems is largely emergent. These closed
environments are we're people like to interact.

------
MatthewPhillips
> Google tried to combat Facebook with open standards and it didn't work.
> OpenSocial, if anyone remembers, was a huge effort by Google which would
> have the effect of commoditising Facebook's functionality. They put
> themselves on the line by partnering with many other companies, and it
> failed to slow Facebook down.

Why does Google have to "slow down" Facebook? What does that even mean? Is
Google only successful if no other successful web companies exist?

~~~
pgeorgi
Google is successful if it has free access to web content. Unfortunately
Facebook locks out Google (and pretty much everyone else in a non-consumer
role), and so someone at Google felt the need to do something about that.

~~~
MatthewPhillips
But they still don't have free access to Facebook or Twitter content. Is
Google not successful? Are they going to become unsuccessful in the
foreseeable future because of this issue? When?

------
brudgers
I've come up with a charitable interpretation of Google shutting down Reader.
And I am not known for being charitable toward Google.

I just have a gut feeling that shutting down Reader may have made life easier
for Google when it comes to National Security Letters, subpoenas, warrants or
whatever. Turning over a list of what someone has read, does seem a bit evil.

Maybe I am being naive in attributing a positive motivation to them on this
issue. But it just feels more plausible in light of the backlash of negative
feelings the shutdown has created, who harbors such feelings, and the rather
trivial resources required to maintain the service.

If they were turning over logs from Reader - and why wouldn't they have been
requested - what options would Google have? Carry on or shutdown or lawyer up,
are about it.

Would the backlash when such a practice was disclosed be less than that for
shutting down Reader? I doubt it. People who didn't use Reader, like me, don't
care about its shutdown. But I'd probably be full of condemnation and
brimstone when commenting on a story about Google turning over reading lists
to the government.

~~~
wpietri
I find that entirely implausible.

If the NSA is getting as much data as we expect, then they can get people's
reading lists from their ISPs. So Google shutting down Reader wouldn't have
kept much of anything out of federal hands.

Further, if Google had a sudden attack of nobility, then it would be Gmail or
Google Voice that they'd be shutting down. That's where the real private
information is, and that's what most people are angry about. Not what a small
fraction of Google's audience gets in their daily papers.

------
Yhippa
The gravitational pull of Google, Facebook, and Twitter is just too big. If
you're a business and not creating content on those sites these days you
aren't getting noticed. So you cater all of your activities towards their
locked-in APIs and you don't have resources to maintain an RSS feed nobody
uses.

As long as content continues to be centralized in those three companies
interop is toast.

~~~
paranoiacblack
> locked-in APIs > interop is toast

Between your post and the author's, I feel like we're talking past each about
what the above two phrases mean.

First of all, what do you call a "locked-in API"? I would imagine it'd be an
API written in a proprietary language or only works on certain systems or
browsers. Personally, I haven't seen that from any of the mentioned companies.
Afaik, most of Google's, Facebook's, and Twitter's API work on any browser
available, any computer that can run those browsers, including mini-computers
and smartphones, even some dumb phones. Where's the lock-in? The fact that you
put your data in their databases? The fact that there isn't a single format
shared between each?

About interoperability being "toast," to what extent? I could probably point
you to a large amount of websites and web services that have integration with
Google, Facebook, and Twitter, sometimes all at the same time. Sounds like
that they can operate together to me. Perhaps, you want them to provide
integration between each other?

~~~
epsylon
Interoperability == open standard.

If Facebook or Google provides an API that's not an open standard, you're
locked-in because the day they decide to remove the API, or to charge high
prices, or deprecate a crucial feature, you can't switch easily to another
platform.

------
zer0gravity
What we need is a user owned facebook. We need to find a way to shrink the
whole Facebook functionality to run on a system the size of a router.

~~~
debt
Diaspora is a thing. was.

------
indraneel24
>Well, fuck them, and fuck that.

But—I'm curious to see what everyone thinks—are we too late for this attitude
to change anything?

~~~
rjd
I've been humming and harring on starting a decentralized RSS based social
network idea I've had bugging me for awhile, probably two years now. There
where a few of these around 2007 and Facebook brought them out and shut them
down.

But I'm hearing the same complaint all over the place, so I'm starting to
think I might not be alone.

I've just been put off by the idea that maybe I'm an outsider and people don't
want that, and it'll be months of work potentially for nothing. Maybe I should
start some thing even if I just hand it off. I dunno, would love to see what
the thirst is out there.

------
programminggeek
I think Reader was a great, if neglected product, but I don't think it matters
that Google maintains it.

What moved the needle for google 5 years ago is not what will move the needle
today. Google will focus more on search, g+, android, apps, cloud, because
those things can make an impact relative to Google's current scale.

------
rsheridan6
If Google wants to kill off internal competitors to Google+, I suppose
blogspot is next on the chopping block.

------
davidp
Similar to Scott Hanselman's "Your Words Are Wasted", a more impactfully
written (IMO) piece about the same problem.

[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=4403558](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=4403558)

------
antitrust
What's good for business is a centralized standard format which makes it easy
for consumers to browse without thinking.

What's good for the net is the opposite, which is the kind of decentralized
it-just-routes-around system that the internet was designed to be in the first
place.

To my chagrin, most of my clients, friends and family prefer the standardized
and sanitized sites like Facebook, Wikipedia, *.google.com, Reddit and Digg.

I miss the anarchy days, when every site was a random gesture thrown up by
someone possessed of the spirit of an idea or a plan, and not all websites
were standardized web apps that are just too "perfect" to be fun, or to permit
evolution.

/off my lawn

------
xenonite
On the contrary. Google requires the access to the open web, because its
advertising and its search engine need that access, as I will show below.

Reader was not known to most people, but to many technical folks. Among them
are many bloggers. Shutting down Reader certainly removed one big plus of the
open blogging world.

Thereby people have less arguments to blog openly. How is that a problem for
Google? If people choose to move over to closed platforms, that content
becomes inacessible to both Google's crawler, and to Google ads on blogs.

Thus, by turning off Reader, Google actually hurts itself not only directly,
but indirectly by treating the openness of the web less favorably.

------
dt7
If Google want us to move from Reader to Google+, why are they not pushing it
as a replacement? Do they think RSS users are a lost cause?

~~~
rsynnott
RSS users were always a tiny minority, and have become more tiny with social
networks (especially Twitter).

------
medell
First the hardware war, then the OS war, followed by the browser war and
search engine war, and now the mobile war and social network war. This won't
be the last... or could it?

Will we be using Facebook daily 5 years from now? 10 years? 20?

Or is the next war in augmented reality, which Google has a head start? (but
using which social network?)

Anyone have good links to futurist thinkers on these topics?

------
mlchild
Whether you agree or disagree with the piece, I think it's perhaps more
interesting to try to put together the clues about Marco's next project.

My guess would be something like a new publishing standard or system that
makes it easy to package good writing into an immersive mobile form, possibly
via Newsstand. But just spitballin' here.

------
505
If you work for Google, and you have a neat idea for an online service, resist
the temptation to do it within Google.

------
alexirobbins
If we want an openweb, advocacy won't cut it over the long haul. open is
currently just less efficient at distributing + monetizing content. That's
what we need to change, not the minds and paychecks of developers.

------
pizu
And here is a further proof that Google wants to become the one-stop shop for
all your internet needs:
[https://www.google.co.uk/flights](https://www.google.co.uk/flights)

------
Kiro
"Over the years, comma usage after prepositional phrases has also apparently
declined."

The prepositional phrase is not in the beginning of the sentence and is less
than four words so no comma needed!

~~~
kivikakk
Also a tad ironic in light of his subsequent invocation of "belive".

------
th0ma5
Brilliant piece. Perhaps we'll always have shifts to and from the mainframe as
it were, in some senses, and I for one really enjoy the ride.

------
aet
I've never used a "Reader" before. Question: Were content providers able to
server ads via the Reader?

~~~
smackfu
Most common monetization options are to either put "ad articles" in the
stream, or to not provide the full article text in the stream, so people had
to follow the link to the full site with ads.

The former strategy was pretty good for getting around people's ad blocking,
since it was essentially a long form text ad.

------
webwanderings
.....Well, fuck them, and fuck that.....

Amen.

------
paranoiacblack
I agree that Facebook started a "war", but I don't think any of these
companies want to "close us in" any more than they did when they first
started. Sure, you can look at the closing of Google Reader as the antithesis
of openness and RSS but you'd somehow seem to miss that Google, Facebook, and
Twitter still support a lot of APIs that promote openness and
interoperability. Actually, they continue to release more and more APIs as do
other startups (i.e. Github).

Openness and interoperability aren't going away, they're merely being
_refined_. That might mean taking away the hacker's toy for a bit while some
kinks get worked out (i.e. Google's Jabber issue and the switch to Blink). It
might also mean that we live in a monoculture for a while (Webkit). But
regardless, the web is steadily improving and no matter how much you all try
to spin it, RSS and Google Reader really aren't the martyrs you claim them to
be. It sucks that even a successful product can be mercilessly shut down by
the evil Google tyrants, but it shouldn't be surprising at all.

Sometimes companies make decisions that hurt a part of their user base for
some perceived benefit for other users. Did Google fuck up by closing Reader?
Probably. But it's not the end of the world.

~~~
wpietri
Of course they want to close us in. Or, more technically, they feel
commercially compelled to do so.

There are only so many eyeballs, and right now being very sticky is an
obviously viable strategy for dominance. Google didn't get into phone
operating systems because they knew or cared much about them. They did it
because their revenue base was under long-term threat. (Hell, Google is trying
experiments to see if they can get in front of your actual eyeballs,
intermediating your entire waking life.) And Facebook tried taking over
people's phones for exactly the same reason.

Talk to the Googlers who have left over the last few years, and you'll hear
very clearly that things have changed internally.

~~~
paranoiacblack
What you're saying is that a company wants you to use their product and no one
else's. Sure, that's how companies work. They aren't compelled to allow anyone
from the outside to contribute. This is not closing us in. Unless I'm missing
something, people are still able to choose the applications they install and
use on their mobile phones, and I don't see that as a lock-in in the
slightest. I understand the internal changes that have happened over the years
at Google, but to say that Google no longer supports or does not plan to
support openness or interoperability is either the word of a prophet or Google
Reader-inspired sensationalism.

~~~
gizzlon
" _What you 're saying is that a company wants you to use their product and no
one else's. Sure, that's how companies work_"

Uhm, what?

So the company selling my milk want me to drink milk, just milk and nothing
but milk?

I thought one of the founding ideas of capitalism is that you can strike deals
that benefit everyone. That you don't have to screw anyone over.

~~~
paranoiacblack
You're misreading what you quoted. I'm telling you that the company that sells
you milk doesn't want you to drink anyone else's milk because that's how
businesses work. They might sell some cheese too, but they also don't want you
eating anyone's else's cheese. Also, perhaps that is one of the founding ideas
of capitalism, but our modern day version is far away from that. Capitalism
screws people over by the day in America.

~~~
gizzlon
Yeah, I understand, and my example was bad.

Internet is such a big space (unlike milk) that if an Internet-company wants
you to use their _Internet-stuff_ and no-one else's _Internet-stuff_ .. well,
I don't know what will happen, but it can't be good.

 _Capitalism screws people over by the day in America_

Finally something we can agree on

------
res0nat0r
Entitlement. I has it.

Why does HN continue to think that companies on the web who give their
services to millions of users away _for free_ (please don't repeat the you are
the product being sold meme), are _entitled_ to direct said companies to keep
any project you deem useful around for as long as you deem it important (to
said $RANDOM_MILLION_USER)?

With a userbase the size of Google there will be millions of people
complaining about removing every single product they've ever released. Google
isn't the Oracle of the world where Oracle releases a product, charges you out
the wazoo, gives you 24/7 support and only enter the market of said product
after researching if it is a good business investment or not. Google is the
one who experiments, tests, lets you use for free, and either retires or
promotes projects which turn out to be good for the company (either tech wise,
or to the dismay of HN money wise). That's their MO.

Google and Facebook allow you to export your data for most of their services,
and I think we can all agree that Google at least are good at giving users a
fair amount of heads up before they sunset a product (or should we call it an
experiment?).

It seems the prevailing notion on HN anymore is once you are a big company
(bad), any service you offer the internet no matter how long ago, should be
kept around indefinitely, because you are a big company (bad) and you now make
a lot of money (bad). Therefore you should let everyone free ride on your
platform so that fellow (broke) startups can bootstrap themselves off your
prior work (good). But once said (good, broke) startups start making lots of
cash, they will then become (bad) and fall into the same category of other
(bad) internet giants.

~~~
icebraining
If I had my own discussion site, I'd permaban anyone who used that fucking
word.

Unless someone is demanding legislation to force Google to keep Reader alive,
stop with the entitlement bullshit. We _are_ entitled to dislike business
models and approaches, we _are_ entitled to criticize them, and we _are_
entitled to not use projects from companies which follow them.

~~~
paranoiacblack
You're right. But you're not entitled to Google Reader. So stop complaining
about it and upvoting posts that complain about it.

~~~
gizzlon
You didn't really read the OP, did you? =]

Edit: If you did, and that's your takeaway, I think you started with a
predefined notion about its content. Please read it again and try to forget
about reader. Reader is not the point. (I'm not the author btw ;)

~~~
paranoiacblack
The GP complains about the entitlement directed towards the shutdown of
Reader. The OP complains about the word entitlement being used at all and I
agree with him, except that the GP is right that no one is entitled to Reader.
I then go on to say that people should stop complaining about it.

