
Google Reader is dead - voidfiles
http://www.google.com/reader/about/#overview-page
======
georgebashi
Google Reader kept the content of RSS feeds cached forever, meaning it was the
last surviving record of a huge number of dead and deleted blogs. The Archive
Team have spent the last month or so fetching those blogs out of Reader to
serve as a permanent archive. They posted a few days ago on HN asking for some
last minute help, and managed to archive 46.23M feeds.

Check out their efforts here:
[http://www.archiveteam.org/index.php?title=Google_Reader](http://www.archiveteam.org/index.php?title=Google_Reader)

~~~
martinkallstrom
My former startup Twingly [http://twingly.com](http://twingly.com) has
hundreds of millions of blog posts stored (everything collected since 2006) in
128 MySql shards with a unified query interface. The last few months of data
are indexed and searchable for free from their website, but the entire archive
is kept forever.

~~~
porker
Would you donate your data to the Internet Archive?

~~~
Aloisius
Or Common Crawl so other people could actually download and use it?

~~~
porker
I didn't realise you couldn't download and use the data from Internet Archive.
If not, that's pretty silly to back up the feeds to them, and I'm a bit
annoyed to have contributed. I'd like to make them available to everyone to
download, analyse, plug into their reader etc etc etc...

~~~
zeckalpha
You can from the Internet Archive. The GGP is talking about Twingly, and the
discussion is about integrating their data with the Archive Team.

~~~
Aloisius
For anything substantial (like say, their actual crawl), they'll only do it on
a case by case basis with a rather restrictive license and you have to drive
up there and plop down the machines to copy it onto.

------
bdz
"... we’re pouring all of our energy into fewer products. We think that kind
of focus will make for a better user experience."

Yeah, Reader held back the development of the robot car, glasses, floating
balloon internet and the brazilian social site...

~~~
batiudrami
I'm pretty sick of this argument. Google is a company, they are not compelled
to continue to support a product which is (presumably) not making money, or
even if the resources they devote to it could be making more money elsewhere.

Honestly I think Google went above and beyond by giving advance notice, having
an API which allows feed exporting and allowing subscriptions to continue to
be exported after they close it down for those who ignored the advance notice
as well as linking to alternative products.

Sure it sucks for those who used it, but can you imagine a company like Apple
or Facebook doing all that for a product they're killing?

~~~
johnchristopher
Understanding the position you are explaining doesn't make the shutdown of
Google reader any less regrettable or irritating.

It's my impression that it's a little bit cliché and borderline to trolling:
every time a "free" product is shutdown and people complain or discuss about
it there is a good free-market capitalist soul coming with condescending
comments about how people shouldn't expect anything when given something for
"free".

We know it. It's still pissing users off. Deal with it.

~~~
batiudrami
I don't think my position is any closer to trolling than the also cliche
comments of 'Google have so much money, running reader must be next-to-nothing
for them', 'if Google gave me the option, I'd gladly pay for it', 'yeah sure,
the (maybe) one full time staff required to look after Reader is really taking
energy away from other projects' which is basically all of the comments on
these threads.

That was what my post was meant to refute, and the weird sense of entitlement
that Google is somehow in the wrong by killing a product which is a waste of
resources for them. There are plenty of alternatives (and I suspect we'll see
a whole bunch more over the coming months), complaining like we deserve reader
to still be available (when consumer-pays products are clearly outside
Google's business model) isn't helping.

~~~
bonaldi
The "weird sense" comes directly from Google's pitches, which amount to "use
our free service: Trust all your data to it! Nothing will go wrong, we're here
forever!".

Which is a pitch they continue to make, with Drive and Hangouts and each
successive launch, but never once cautioning "btw if this doesn't work out for
us we'll kill the service". They even relaunch previously failed projects in
the same spaces where they've pulled this before, with Keep aiming for the
same space Notebook (RIP) did. Do they think we're stupid?

They can't have their cake and eat it. They can position themselves as the
trustworthy guardians for whom organising the world's information is the only
goal, or they can position themselves as the ruthless capitalists where
business is the ultimate goal, but they can't do both.

That's what people object to. You can say that they're naive for believing
that a business won't put the bottom line first, but Google has always
pretended otherwise, right from the first line of the IPO. "Google is not a
conventional company. We do not intend to become one."

Fine, but then "any conventional company would do this" is not a good enough
defence for your actions.

~~~
Shooti
>They even relaunch previously failed projects in the same spaces where
they've pulled this before, with Keep aiming for the same space Notebook (RIP)
did. Do they think we're stupid?

This gets repeated a lot (understandable given its launches proximity to the
Reader shutdown notice) but its inaccurate. Keep doesn't address the same use
case as Evernote/Notebook at all and isn't trying to. Its more of a
Notepad/Apple Notes competitor if anything.

------
mtowle
BREAKING: In a surprise belated April Fool's joke, Google revives Reader,
according to former CEO Eric Schmidt, "just to fuck with everyone who spent
money developing a shitty alternative."

~~~
personlurking
V2: Google Reader reads you.

~~~
znowi
Ha. Very smooth. Upvote for you :)

------
steve19
Right up till the 11th hour I held out hope that Google would give Reader a
last minute stay of execution. A sad day indeed.

~~~
davidjohnstone
As much as my life would have been easier this year without the decision to
close Google Reader (I think this is what they call #firstworldproblems), it's
a good thing that they didn't change their mind and decide to not shut it down
at the last minute.

Too many people have invested too much time in creating viable alternatives to
Google Reader, and un-discontinuing it would have thrown a massive spanner in
the works. I probably would have stayed with an alternative out of spite.

~~~
bentcorner
For me at least, having Reader shut down made me realize that depending on
products delivered for free is ultimately unsustainable - I have no control
over those services and if I can't figure out how that company is making money
from me, there's little justification for that provider to continue providing
that service, unmodified, for perpetuity. Self-hosted services are the only
ones that you can truly rely on.

I'm hoping I'm not the only one that has come to this conclusion.

~~~
tomkarlo
Unfortunately, the fact that you're paying for a product isn't a particularly
better signal that it's sustainable, unless you individually can cover the
costs of running that product. I've had for-pay services I used discontinued
because they weren't profitable or because they were bought by another company
and deprecated (Slicehost) even though they were profitable.

It seems like a better strategy is to assume that no service or company is
forever, and demand reasonable ways to export your data or setup in the event
they shut down (and time to do that export before they turn off.)

------
unicornporn
For me, this was a good move.

It inspired me to finally look past Google for the web based services I use
daily (search, mail, rss, analytics, calendar, video hosting etc). Google's
wants to know as much about me as possible. Putting all of my eggs in their
basket seems like horrible idea. I've now come quite far in my exodus.
Yesterday I found [https://www.startpage.com/](https://www.startpage.com/)
(uses Google) which gives good results (roughly same as Swedish Google but not
filter bubbled). DDG (uses different sources, but seems to weight Bing) is
downright terrible when not using English as search language.

~~~
mikelat
> Google's wants to know as much about me as possible.

Which is the reason they shut it down most probably. They can data mine your
documents, emails, social networking etc but something like google reader
doesn't help much. They most they'll get out of it is a few rss feeds and can
analyze what you like, but hell they already know what you search for so it's
useless data.

~~~
MarkMc
I have the opposite view - when I use Reader the folks at Google know how
often I click on certain topics, and how long I spend reading each topic. My
gut tells me that such information would be quite useful to their search
product, even if they have already know my search history. And for some users
Google will _not_ know their search history and social information.

A similar logic applies to Google Checkout (aka Google Wallet). I would have
thought that knowing my purchase history would be very useful to the search
algorithm.

So I really don't understand Google's approach. Their search algorithm is
their prime asset, but they seem willing to degrade it bit by bit.

~~~
pavel_lishin
I think that the number of people who use Google Reader is tiny in comparison
to the number of people who use gmail, which itself is probably fairly small
compared to the number of people who use the search engine.

------
BenoitEssiambre
Google lost _a lot_ of trust and goodwill from a lot of its power users with
this move. I hope for them they had a good reason.

~~~
debt
Why do they need the trust and goodwill of a lot of power users?

~~~
RockyMcNuts
read Crossing The Chasm. You don't get the late adopters unless you get the
early adopters first. Google may think they've got to a point where they can
just cram stuff down people's throats, but if so, it's the beginning of the
end for them, like it was for Microsoft.

~~~
btilly
I am curious on what basis you say that Microsoft thinking that it could cram
stuff down people's throats was the beginning of the end.

It seems to me that Microsoft behaved that way for over a decade. It resulted
in some pissed off geeks, and no real problems until the Europeans fined
Microsoft enough to scare the company. (A fear they never recovered from.)

~~~
RockyMcNuts
I don't know that there's any one authoritative answer, but they fended off
the initial Internet threat by cramming IE down everyone's throat. They did
that in a number of cases, were fast followers and put people out of business
by integrating/bundling. I think the attitude was they could do it again if
they had to, thought they could do the same in phones and tablets, didn't
listen to their customers, didn't update IE and XP for years.

Partly Microsoft got lazy and didn't execute the products customers wanted,
maybe the senior people were wrong generation to realize they had the wrong
products and Google and Apple were leapfrogging them, maybe all the legacy
cruft in their ecosystem slowed them down, maybe the world changed so they
didn't have the same market power. I don't know that fines ever really scared
them into changing behavior. They flushed more money down the drain in online
services than anyone ever threatened to fine them.

Even more than most, Google's business depends on trust. Once people feel
they're going to get screwed over after investing time and trusting Google
with their information and data exhaust, they'll go to DuckDuckGo, Apple,
Facebook (ha), whatever. Google has nothing like the moat Microsoft had. On
the Internet, the switch to the competition is a click away.

------
ivank
Organizing the World's Information... and setting it on fire 8 years later.

------
petercooper
It'll be less important now than it was 3-6 years ago, but get ready for all
those FeedBurner subscriber count widgets to show huge subscriber # crashes as
Reader no longer checks in.

Back in the day, they were a sort of informal auditing system and definitely
helped me land advertisers for my blog (simply because I could "prove" I had
20,000 readers or whatever).

Thankfully I ditched the Web and moved to e-mail and know exactly how many
subscribers I had, but this was certainly more luck and not any great piece of
foresight on my part ;-)

~~~
pavel_lishin
This is going to sound antagonistic, but I'm genuinely curious: How many
subscribers did you lose when you switched from RSS to email, and how do you
know that all of them are receiving and reading your dispatches?

Personally, getting an e-mail instead of an RSS feed is sub-optimal - I can't
easily add things to pocket from e-mail. I'm also wondering how many people
trained their clients to re-route to spam.

~~~
petercooper
I didn't do a like for like switch from the Web to e-mail, it was more
specific for the format, so I can't make a direct comparison sadly. Because
e-mail proved way more successful for me, I've basically let the Web
properties die but that was not the original intent.

With e-mail, the engagement and revenue are way higher, and it's possible to
get an accurate feel for how big the audience is (as in, I know I have 123k
subscribers or whatever) _and_ how many of those are engaged, reading, and
clicking on stuff.

I was very skeptical at the start and just tried it out because of all the
e-mail newsletter hoopla on HN 3-4 years ago but it's now my main business and
growing more rapidly than my Web publications ever did.

There are, of course, many who are not fans of e-mail but like Facebook
oriented businesses can make good money even though not everyone likes
Facebook.. so too can e-mail companies do very well off the majority who are
still using e-mail.

------
Narretz
I use The Old Reade, which I can use exactly like Google Reader, with the
exception that k does not always skip to the next article; if you're reading
an article it skips to the top of that. Same strange behavior as Google Reader
is that while the number of unread posts is correct, the content of your feed
is not up-to-date, so you first have to click on the result number, then it is
updated.

Apart from that, it's really nice. I never used any social features of the
Reader, just the aggregation. That's why I couldn't care less if they
implement RSS support or a recommendation engine in G+.

~~~
greyman
We'll see how it takes off when more users will come. It works fine feature-
wise for me, it's just noticeably slower than Google Reader was... they
probably don't have a large enough infrastructure yet.

------
beaker52
I wish there was a decent alternative out there. They all seem to be a bit
unpolished.

The most polished alternative I've seen is Feedly. I wrote to the founder
about this many moons ago explaining that in trying to be 'innovative' with
the UI, for me the whole user experience detracts so badly from the
functionality I want from the app that I don't want to use it.

Where is the alternative, with the polish, without the 'innovation'. Perhaps I
should build one...

I'll get my coat.

~~~
greetings
There are a few I have come to like:

These ones are all simple and much like google reader. Digg, BazQux and The
Old reader all have pocket and/or similar services integrated and are all
nice. I have decided that I will be using BazQux for my reader needs, it is
fastest and seems to be nicely designed and is robust. It will also not be
going away because it is currently profitable.

The Old Reader [http://theoldreader.com/](http://theoldreader.com/)

Digg Reader(yes that digg) [https://digg.com/reader](https://digg.com/reader)

and BazQux reader [https://bazqux.com/](https://bazqux.com/)

Comma feed [http://theoldreader.com/](http://theoldreader.com/)

------
habosa
RIP Reader. For those looking for a replacement, especially those with an
Android phone, check out Newsblur. It's all open source, the developer is
accessible, and most importantly it works insanely well. I honestly like it
better than Reader.

~~~
davidw
I'm trying it, but it has a few things that bug me.

They messed with the arrow keys - they no longer scroll the page. I'm always
accidentally going to the next or previous article. ARGH!

I miss the smart sorting order that Reader had - it was really good about
bubbling stuff I cared about up to the top and letting me whip through the
rest.

~~~
bering
The developer has listened to the feedback on scrolling and added
configuration options so you can now use the arrow keys. Bugged me as well,
but I'm happy with the new options.

~~~
pavel_lishin
I dislike those options. I do not want to set a percentage to scroll by; I
want to use whatever my browser would normally scroll by natively.

------
mikejarema
I've been using Google Alerts via RSS for years now, primarily consuming the
alerts by way of Reader, but more recently Feedly.

One thing I didn't expect was to have Alerts drop RSS support coinciding with
Reader's death. However, today in Feedly I'm staring at a wall of "Google
Alerts no longer supports RSS delivery" items.

This suggests to me that RSS was an output for Google products insofar as it
served as a way of feeding content (and eyeballs) into Reader. Now that Reader
is gone, why would Google output RSS?

Anyone seeing any other Google RSS feeds failing in a similar fashion?

------
csense
I have no gmail account, no Youtube account, and no Google Reader...Google's
always been a little too big for me to want to trust more than I have to, so
I've gotten by without accounts on their services...

And that means I get to feel smugly superior to everyone else in this
discussion.

~~~
pdevr
You can, at least about Gmail. Especially since there is no way to export your
Gmail data using Google Takeout.

~~~
pchander
Or use something like Thunderbird to copy over your email to a new provider
using IMAP.

------
d2ncal
Nobody mentioned tinytinyrss - I found it to be the best rss reader as a
google reader alternative.

Its open source and also has an android app that rocks.

------
nakedrobot2
Sad, sad. I love seeing all the stealth replacements pop up in the last week
or so.

Still, it is a sad day for RSS in general.

Google, this will not help me use G+.

Sad.

~~~
pingbear
If they'd integrated it into G+ I would have been less hesitant to use it.

~~~
nakedrobot2
They arguably did do a half-ass integration with G+, removing other sharing
options and removing the nascent social network that lived inside Reader.

------
gmantastic
I liked Google Reader, but all those great posts queued up with no time to
read them properly felt like neglected homework. It's a shame to lose it, but
maybe for the best. I won't be rushing to recreate it.

Links posted on Hacker News and Twitter allow me to find something interesting
to read when I need it, without making any kind of commitment. For the very
rare thing that I don't want to miss, I subscribe by email.

------
iliaznk
RIP By the way, I quite like the Digg Reader but it doesn't display the unread
count regardless of the settings. Is it only me?

~~~
snogglethorpe
I don't see any unread counts either, despite turning them on in settings (the
FAQ mentions that there's such a setting, although it implies it's turned on
by default, whereas it was turned off for me...).

In fact, I also don't get any icons—or text, they're just blank space—for
buttons... to even open the settings dialog I had to click randomly in likely-
looking blank spaces on the main page. ><

I get the feeling they really rushed this out, and maybe didn't do a whole lot
of testing...

------
stevewillows
I've found a decent experience using Feedly in Chrome for the desktop and
GReader for Android using the Feedly API. Still not as good as EasyRSS, but it
will suffice until the dust settles.

In other news: EasyRSS has been open sourced:
[https://github.com/davidsun/EasyRSS](https://github.com/davidsun/EasyRSS)

------
ciniglio
If you're looking for a new reader to try, check out www.readuction.com .

It's a different take on RSS, that intelligently gives you fewer articles to
read. A friend and I built it over a few months, and we'd love any feedback
you have.

You can import and export your feeds, so no need to worry about having data
locked in.

~~~
finnw
Looks good. But how do you resync?

------
pgambling
"I felt a great disturbance in the Force, as if millions of voices suddenly
cried out in terror and were suddenly silenced. I fear something terrible has
happened."

------
roberthahn
On the topic of Google Reader alternatives: most of the popular alternatives
involve a central online storage. I may be unique, but I'd be quite happy for
an iOS app that allows me to import my OPML file of feeds and sync it locally.

Given those constraints, could anyone suggest an app that would fit the bill?
I've been looking, and the only app I could find that fit the criteria so far
is RSSRunner by golden-apps.com -- which I'm not quite happy with.

~~~
johnminter
Sounds like Vienna would interest you... Not sure you could import your feeds
directly, but it is not hard to set them up...

~~~
roberthahn
unless I missed something, Vienna looks like a Mac OS X app… I was looking for
an iPhone/iPad app

------
olegp
If you still haven't found a replacement, here's our list of alternatives that
was on the front page of HN on Friday:
[https://starthq.com/apps/?q=reader](https://starthq.com/apps/?q=reader)

It now includes the additions mentioned in the comments and the countries
where the service is hosted for those that are concerned by Prism.

------
rob22
In future, G+ also dead like this.......

RIP for GReader.....

~~~
lazyjones
My hopes are on Google Groups, which is just absymal. Hopefully it's next ...

------
stephen_mcd
If you've left finding a replacement to now, please take a second to check out
kouio:

[https://kouio.com](https://kouio.com)

We posted it to HN a few days ago, and since then have had over 600 signups
and processed over 1.5 million feed items!

We've made a ton of tiny improvements since then, with many more to come.

~~~
cfinke
I tried it when you posted it, but I gave up on it when it took 15 seconds to
load any content after logging in :-(

------
shurcooL
I didn't want to accept this would happen. So it's kinda hard to believe it
actually did.

Oh well, more free time.

~~~
squidi
I've not enjoyed using any of the new readers so far, so will be spending my
"free" time going though my Pocket and Kindle backlogs (The Penguin Book of
Historic Speeches is insiprational).

------
bdz
Serious question: Why no one offered to buy or take over the service? Like
Google Wave - Apache Wave

~~~
fpgeek
From what I understand, Google Reader was fairly tied into Google's
infrastructure (e.g. piggybacking off of Google's web crawler for feed
updates), so there wouldn't be much left if you separated Google Reader from
Google.

------
prfeedreader
Even though Google Reader is dead you can still migrate to alternative
services, like Feedreader Online:
[http://feedreader.com/online/](http://feedreader.com/online/) Just use OPML
files to import your feeds and categories.

------
frankcaron
I'm curious; given that HN represents a community that could very well be
construed as the "power user" archetype, how much would people here have paid
for Reader as a service? $5/month? $100/year? Free with a Google Drive
subscription?

~~~
pavel_lishin
For Google Reader specifically, probably $0.00 - it would feel too much like a
hostage negotiation at this point.

I am, however, paying $24/year for NewsBlur right now, so I guess $2/month is
my starting bid.

------
iamkhush
Just cant figure it out why?? Anyways , using Feedly on web and android. Looks
ok!!

------
mikemoka
It is their right to choose to discontinue a product, I would have appreciated
them more anyway if they would have chosen to give back to the community and
put in the limited amount of work needed to opensource it though.

Goodbye Reader.

------
moreentropy
This is hardly news now is it?

------
thomasf1
Quick poll:

Where do you stand on this?

-> Focus (1...10) Keeping the product

I´m a bit conflicted.. on one hand they lost user confidence by discontinuing
Reader, on the other I completely get the approach to focus on a few things
and really do them well.

------
lunchladydoris
This sucks. Hitting RE in Alfred has become muscle memory by now.

I've switched to Feedly and it's pretty decent. Something feels a little off,
but it does most of what I want.

Sigh.

------
magoon
Gmail's days may be numbered -- you never know..

~~~
bdcravens
Perhaps, but I doubt it - it's a freaking goldmine of data. RSS feeds - lets
Google know a little bit about you, but not in the way that your personal
searches and your personal communications do.

------
tdicola
Should be a fun next couple of weeks as all the Reader replacements get a big
spike in traffic and deal with inevitable scaling problems.

------
ddunkin
Who actually paid money directly to Google for this service? If your answer is
'not me', then I find it tough to complain.

------
pjmlp
So what! My native RSS reader is still working.

------
shreeshga
Its for the better. First step towards a 'news push'[ex. Google currents]
rather than a 'news pull'

------
cypherpnks
All data deleted is a dick move. Google should at least be able to preserve
takeout data for eternity.

------
ensmotko
The Android application still seems to be working, but they'll probably kill
it soon enough.

------
tvwonline
3rd party apps are still working, I wonder how long until they are cut off?

~~~
ihuman
Reeder has been cut off (or at least for me). It just had in update that adds
feedly and feed wrangler.

~~~
tvwonline
Yep, it's gone now. The reeder update was just in the nick of time. I wonder
if someone at google was waiting for it to update ;-)

~~~
elithrar
Note that Reeder (on iOS) had Feedbin and Feedburner support prior to this
update.

------
otikik
Good-night, sweet prince.

------
mmuro
Ultimate dick move for them to link to Google Reader alternatives.

~~~
kyle_wm
Really, or are you being sarcastic? That seems pretty classy to me...

------
Confusion
Now if only Feedly will allow me some way to pay them...

~~~
unicornporn
There's NewsBlur for that... :)

~~~
easyfrag
Feedbin have been using the money I and others have been paying to enhance
their service. [http://blog.feedbin.me/](http://blog.feedbin.me/)

------
faizanaziz
Happens all the time… You are the product not the customer… Thats why we built
Pixter - [http://pixter.in](http://pixter.in)

------
alinspired
Bastards, they killed reader :)

------
tlrobinson
RIP

------
tzury
no news.

has been chewed over and over. here and everywhere.

yet, get the top position at HN.

What does this means?

~~~
mwexler
The stages of grief each take time, and the amount of time varies from person
to person. [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/K%C3%BCbler-
Ross_model](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/K%C3%BCbler-Ross_model)

------
binarydreams
A Sad Day. RIP.

------
camus
Long live to Google Reader! I hope, it will allow some startup to come up with
great products, but please ,think users first , not showing off your html5
skills or whatever... RSS is about reading text content and suscribing to
feeds , not bells and whistles or closed social networking plateforms.

------
Ultron
Good Lord people. Get on with your lives!

------
workbench
Last time I ever trust that company with a service I rely on.

and before you ask no I have never used GMail

~~~
icebraining
Because they closed a service? I think you'll be hard pressed to find _anyone_
\- company, non-profit, whoever - who will maintain a service indefinitely.

If you want to keep something running for as long as possible, you need to
eliminate single points of failure like those (except yourself, of course).
That means building a stack where each part is either ran by you or a
replaceable commodity.

For example, I run my email, RSS and website on a generic VPS (of which there
are many providers) which runs an open source stack that I know how to
configure and maintain.

I still rely on other people, but not on a single person or company.

~~~
radiac
I feel exactly the same way - wherever possible I run my own services on my
own servers, so I know where my data's going, and I'm not at the mercy of
someone else changing or removing a feature I like, or shutting it down
completely. If I fall out with the hosting company, I can just get another
server elsewhere.

I only switched to self hosted for RSS recently though - when google announced
they were shutting reader, I figured I'd write my own for an existing django
site. Quick shameless plug: I released it on Sunday, in case anyone's
interested - [https://github.com/radiac/django-
yarr](https://github.com/radiac/django-yarr)

Which brings me on to my main exception for self-hosting: public repositories
on github. The collaborative features they provide seem worth the loss of
control - although their recent UI enhancements (making it harder to check
issue counts, find repo addresses etc) does rather prove my point.

------
chrra
So it goes.

------
alolz
i can not belive..google reader is dead..

------
SCdF
.

------
adamnemecek
We hardly knew ye.

