
Google Reader Founder: I Never Would Have Founded Reader Inside Today's Google - lingben
http://www.forbes.com/sites/alexkantrowitz/2013/07/01/google-reader-founder-i-never-would-have-founded-reader-inside-todays-google/
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cocoflunchy
I feel like the only reason we hear so much about Google Reader is because the
main users were either journalists or bloggers, which creates an extremely
disproportionate noise / (former) user ratio.

~~~
snorkel
You are 900% correct. Having worked directly in the feed reader space, and
trying to make money at it, and I can testify that the segment of online
audience who even know what a feed is are a small club of tech news junkies
and assorted wonks who all seem to know each other. They are a passionate
crowd, but many companies have tried and failed at bringing that passion for
feed reading to the mainstream, probably because most people don't read tech
blogs all day long.

~~~
darylfritz
I feel the problem was more in the lack of curation and innovation of feed-
delivery. FlipBoard seems to be successful without appearing to be a feed-
reader on the surface. Google just missed the opportunity to make the feed
reader more appealing to the average user.

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mehrdada
"Google Reader founder Chris Wetherell said that if the idea came to him in
today’s Google, he would leave the company and build it on his own rather than
put it at the mercy of Google leadership."

Guess what dude?! If I were in that position and I were primarily worried
about my project "being at the mercy of Google" (or any company that I don't
have sufficient control over, for that matter), I would have left _anytime_.
It should not be something you realize _today_. This is just whining over a
"wrong" (presumably; assuming you would have pulled it off well) tradeoff you,
yourself, made back in the day. It's not "today's Google vs. back then's
Google". This is the tradeoff that you make anytime you decide to work for
someone else; this is obvious and was obvious back in the day. If you had not
seen it, the blame is wholly on you.

Google Reader would not have been a guaranteed success that it was without
Google's resources. If one does not have the balls to take the risk of working
at his or her own startup, he or she is not entitled to the benefits either.
In hindsight, it's too easy to say "I would have gone and pulled it off
independently".

I personally think Larry overall has been focusing on what matters and under
his awesome leadership, Google is performing far better than Eric's time and
this whole situation is not dissimilar to what happened at WWDC1997 and
Steve's response to the random questioner in the audience:

"...the hardest thing is how does that fit in to a cohesive larger vision
that's gonna allow you to sell 8 billion dollars... 10 billion dollars... a
product a year."

[http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FF-
tKLISfPE](http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FF-tKLISfPE)

~~~
epistasis
> This is just whining over a "wrong" (presumably; assuming you would have
> pulled it off well) tradeoff you, yourself, made back in the day. It's not
> "today's Google vs. back then's Google".

I don't see any whining about a wrong, I see somebody saying that Google is
different today from when it was back when he first made Reader. I don't see
him regretting making Reader, just saying that today, because of cultural
changes at Google, he'd do it outside of Google rather than inside of Google.

This is not somebody regretting their actions, this is somebody saying that
Google's culture is different today then it was back then. Clearly you're a
fan of this new culture, and that's just fine, but don't miscontrue his words.

~~~
mehrdada
>> I don't see any whining about a wrong

I don't think it was a wrong decision either--hence the quotes. I think it was
not easy to pull it off outside Google.

>> I see somebody saying that Google is different today from when it was back
when he first made Reader

I do not deny that there might have been a fundamental culture change at
Google. My point, precisely, is that a culture change is orthogonal to the
fundamental fact that at someone else's company, they have the ultimate
control over your invention. That's one big reason people go (and went) start
start-ups. This is what has never changed and it's the employee's fault if
they do not realize this when they accept their employment offer.

>> Clearly you're a fan of this new culture

I've never accepted an offer from Google. What I said does not necessarily
imply that I'm a fan of the internal culture, or would have liked new Google
management better if I were an employee. I am assessing the overall vision of
Google leadership and their output from the outside and believe they are doing
a very good job, and the credit for a company doing well should first and
foremost go to the utmost leadership.

I like the new management better because they seem to have a much more
coherent and focused vision, waste less resources, and while they obviously
make mistakes too, overall, they have shown boldness in their actions. Even if
I'm not particularly happy with the act of shutting down Google Reader, I like
that they are bold and have the courage to execute what they think is right.
Cutting a fairly successful product does not directly imply good leadership,
but it does imply boldness which is highly correlated with good leadership.

~~~
epistasis
> This is what has never changed and it's the employee's fault if they do not
> realize this when they accept their employment offer.

My point is that he already realizes this. And that within one Google culture,
he felt comfortable handing it all over to Google and taking advantage of all
their resources and clout, and that in today's different Google culture, it's
not a clearcut decision anymore, and in particular, pursuing a project that
management sees as being at odds with the core mission of Google+ would
probably be a bad idea. So I don't think you have any news for him, despite
your initial claims.

~~~
mehrdada
If his primary concern had been Google Reader staying alive, he arguably had
"false sense of comfort" back then, and this is exactly what I am saying. He
made a mistake in evaluating risks.

The news is not for him, of course, as it would have been useless. The news is
for anyone else who feels like safely innovating within a big company with
_any_ culture today. There is a trade-off that you always take. Know it well
when you make it. It can be much easier to leverage a big company's resources;
on the other hand, your product may not follow your initial vision or get a
bullet in its head. "The culture seemed cool back then so I was fooled by
recruiter propaganda telling me I have control, blah, blah..." is not an
excuse.

EDIT: To clarify, all of this post presumed it would have been successful if
he'd done it outside Google, something he seems to imply by his statement. I
want to reiterate that I personally object to this very assumption, so I think
he made the right trade-off, in which case, it's all fine, but he should not
post a rant that implies doing it outside Google would have been catch-free.

------
nemothekid
At the same time, I'm pretty sure an RSS Reader founded today inside Google
would go the way of Wave.

If Reader was ultimately unmonetizable, I'll cry when its gone, but I don't
think anyone should feel entitled to a free service.

I'm not a Google employee, but I think Reader is poor measure for how "open"
Google is right now. I mean, christ, with Project Loon, I don't think they are
any worse, however they have a limited amount of engineers and maintaining an
RSS application in 2013 doesn't seem like a huge priority.

~~~
epistasis
>If Reader was ultimately unmonetizable, I'll cry when its gone, but I don't
think anyone should feel entitled to a free service.

I don't think that it was not monetizable, any less than GMail is. Perhaps
there were high, hidden costs in maintaining such a large feed database that
would mean that a comparable revenue stream from Reader would not pay for
itself nearly as much as GMail does.

I think that in the end it's just that Google did not care about the Reader
users. They didn't need them, there wasn't enough of a stink when they said
they were going to get rid of Reader, either internally or externally.

~~~
bryanbuckley
>I think that in the end it's just that Google did not care about the Reader
users.

What % of Google employees do you think are also Reader users?

edit: I assume it is something like 90%. Which is why I'm pretty impressed
that this change went through.

~~~
tempestn
I highly doubt it's even close to 90%. If it were, I think you're right that
it's much less likely it would have been shut down. There are many very
technical people out there that just don't find RSS fits with their workflow.

Personally, I have a list of blogs I like to read in a couple bookmarks
folders, and when I feel like reading them, I'll go to the bookmarks and see
what's up. I don't really care if I miss posts, so I have no real need for a
system that will catalog them all for me. I have tried a couple times to get
into it, but just found it wasn't for me. (As a means of consuming media. I do
use RSS for automating various processes, as well as the occasional RSS-to-
email when I really need notifications for something (like rare classifieds
posts I'm searching for).) Anyway, my point is, I'm pretty technical - I run a
web based company and embrace plenty of modern technologies - and I never got
into RSS. I'm fairly certain the majority of Google employees don't make
regular use of an RSS reader either. (Although I imagine a significant
minority do as well.)

~~~
medde
or maybe they don't want their employer knowing everything they read?

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arkitaip
Does 20% time even exist in today's Google?

~~~
Afforess
No. It is not advertised as a benefit anymore:
[https://www.google.com/about/jobs/lifeatgoogle/benefits/](https://www.google.com/about/jobs/lifeatgoogle/benefits/)

[http://www.businessinsider.com/google-engineer-20-time-is-
de...](http://www.businessinsider.com/google-engineer-20-time-is-dead-2012-3)

~~~
teebs
I don't work there, but I think it is still around. When I was considering
whether to accept an offer there, everyone I asked said they had 20% time,
although people used it different ways, and some people just did normal work
in their 20% time. Can a Googler confirm?

~~~
proexploit
Like dsymonds mentioned in reply to the parent comment, 20% time is still
alive and well.

------
IvyMike
> he would leave the company and build it on his own

Every place I've ever worked has made me sign a piece of paper specifically
trying to prevent this scenario.

~~~
mcintyre1994
How exactly does that work? Are you just not allowed to earn money as self-
employed for X time after leaving?

~~~
jclos
I think you just can't "compete" with your former employer for X years after
leaving, i.e. building a product that is doing the same thing one of their
products is doing.

~~~
pessimizer
How would he have been competing with Reader if he hadn't made it yet?

------
visarga
I don't understand - what is the fuss about Google Reader? I tried using it a
few times. I prefer reddit to it. Would someone please explain what is so
special about aggregating RSS?

Did it have a trainable classifier we could teach to label RSS items or
anything else besides simple management of what was read?

~~~
ScottWhigham
Let's take it one level higher: is your question really "what is the fuss
about RSS?" or is it your original? If you already understand RSS yet don't
'get' Google Reader, I understand that - I'm right there with you. There
were/are far better ways to consume RSS for me and so GR was nothing special.
If you don't 'get' RSS, then that's too big of a topic for here. You would
want to search more about it.

Sorry if this comes across as pedantic - that's not my intent!

~~~
visarga
I understand RSS and I have written programs that parse RSS feeds. I was just
wondering why was Google's aggregation better. It seems it has to do with the
management of feeds and read/unread items, but that is just a basic interface.

I would have loved to see auto classification, user defined topics and content
recommendation. That would have made a much smarter RSS tool.

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sjs1234
Love avacado. A coworker pointed it out just before valentines day, and now
it's the default way my wife and I text each other.

~~~
massless
I'm glad you like it! It's been fun to build.

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lessnonymous
I think Google would be wise to offer a discontinued product to the creator.
If they have no interest in Reader any more, then Wetherell should be offered
the product.

Possibly he would need to pay something for it (preferably over a long term)
or he would be given the source, but absolutely no users / user data.

That way they get innovators to dream big ideas like AdSense, but if those
ideas are rejected or later shuttered, the innovator gets to keep his idea.

~~~
mierle
Unfortunately most Google software is practically inseparable from Google's
infrastructure. Open sourcing stuff is hard, mostly thankless work.

~~~
Mindless2112
Neat things do come of it though. Code Search, for example, ended up as an
technical explanation [1], which I found fascinating, and example
implementation [2], which I found useful.

[1]
[http://swtch.com/~rsc/regexp/regexp4.html](http://swtch.com/~rsc/regexp/regexp4.html)
[2]
[http://code.google.com/p/codesearch/](http://code.google.com/p/codesearch/)

~~~
mdwrigh2
That's not actually the codebase for code search though -- it's a re-
implementation of it done in the original authors new language.

~~~
Mindless2112
That's my point though: just because a retired product is heavily tied to
Google's infrastructure doesn't mean that they couldn't release something
useful out of it.

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AbhishekBiswal
Seriously. There are many alternatives out there, but I still miss the good
old google reader.

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piyush_soni
He probably doesn't realize that it would have never been as successful
without Google's data power. So yes, he could have opened his own company and
released a Reader, just that no one would come to know about it.

~~~
massless
Small correction: Actually, I've long asserted that Google's infrastructure
and talent are key reasons that Reader was successful. I think that neither in
the interview, nor the article, did I suggest that – though I could be
mistaken.

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volaski
There's a big difference between "Google Reader Founder" and "A Google
employee who was in charge of Google Reader project". Android was "founded".
Google reader was not.

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alxndr
> ...if the idea came to him in today’s Google, he would leave the company and
> build it on his own rather than put it at the mercy of Google leadership.

I wonder how much this rings true for anyone currently at Google.

