Google Reader was supposed to be much more than a tool for nerds. But it never got the chance.
  • abhibeckert@beehaw.orgEnglish
    4·
    2 years ago

    Google didn’t just kill Reader that day, they killed my relationship with Google.

    There have been plenty of services I used at Google that they killed however Reader was the one that didn’t have any good alternative. It was the one that hurt the most, and I don’t think I have signed up for a single Google service since the day Reader was killed.

  • canpolat@programming.devEnglish
    4·
    2 years ago

    I was upset when Reader was killed. But looking back and seeing what Google has become over time, I think it was for the best. Now we have entire companies that only do one thing: RSS, and they are good at it. If Reader was still a thing, I’m afraid it would have extinguished RSS.

    Names matter, and Reader told everyone that it was for reading when it could have been for so much more. “If Google made the iPod,” he says, “they would have called it the Google Hardware MP3 Player For Music, you know?”

    This is funny, but I think Reader was a good name. At least it reflected what I want to do with the product.

      • canpolat@programming.devEnglish
        1·
        1 year ago

        I use InoReader. Most of the sources I want/need has RSS feeds. For the rest I create feeds using Feed43. I use it daily and that’s how I get news, YouTube videos, Twitter feeds (via Nitter), Reddit/Lemmy posts.

  • sculd@beehaw.orgEnglish
    3·
    2 years ago

    That was really the moment people realized Google is going downhill.

    I moved off Gmail, GDrive. Use DDG for personal stuff and only Google at work. The only irreplaceable thing seems to be YouTube but whatever. I am not trusting any new product from Google.

  • Bleu [they/them]@beehaw.orgEnglish
    1·
    2 years ago

    God, I miss Reader. It really was a great thing that Google ruined because they couldn’t somehow cram ads into it.

  • tom42@beehaw.orgEnglish
    1·
    2 years ago

    I always wondered why Google took this choice. With the help of this article I understand now.

    RSS ist still not dead but many commercial websites and platforms are not interested in this because it is harder to monetize.

    Although the advantages are obvious. An RSS feed is much more accessible in many ways. It is most times better readable, sortable, offline savable and more efficient to get. What is even better for the environment because a with scripts and external content overloaded web page has a much higher carbon fingerprint.

    Google Reader died and so ATOM/RSS will because the lack of commercial success.