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Reading these comments makes me think of a crazy conspiracy theory: Google killed Reader to promote search.
by parhurs 10y ago
Reading these comments makes me think of a crazy conspiracy theory: Google killed Reader to promote search.
- arca_vorago 10y agoI think you may be on to something here. I bet it was a data based decision...
- jasonvorhe 10y agoReader didn't have enough active users to keep it running.
- dublinben 10y agoReader didn't have enough active employees to keep it running. Nobody inside Google worked on it any more, so it was just a zombie product running on inertia.
- naravara 10y agoReader's active users, though, tended to be influencers who read a lot and shared what they read with their friends on social media. So they still drove traffic, just by a different mechanism. Many of the people I followed on Reader moved to Twitter after Google took it down and mimicked its social functions there. I'd wager they're still either using RSS readers or jury-rigging Twitter into being something like it.
- someguydave 10y agoYeah I wonder if Google realized that people were reading long form content (much of it hosted off Google) without ads. Thus their own audience was being shunted off-site without revenue. That interpretation only makes sense if you think Google would rather have more good little click monkeys than organizing good content...
- arca_vorago 10y agoFrom the lack of quality search results and the infestation of ads if you don't use an adblocker, I don't think that interpretation would be too far fetched.
- wodenokoto 10y agoThe common theory is they did it to boosts Google plus. They wanted you to follow blogs interest on G+ rather than more directly via Reader/RSS.
- trendia 10y agoHowever, that would imply Google had some sort of coordination between teams...
- caminante 10y agoThe driver was financial. Google cited (03/2013) a user decline [0]. You don't need a conspiracy or more reasons to shutter the service. > "While the product has a loyal following, over the years usage has declined." [0] https://googleblog.blogspot.com/2013/03/a-second-spring-of-cleaning.html https://googleblog.blogspot.com/2013/03/a-second-spring-of-c...
- mtone 10y agoThey also killed iGoogle in the same year, and that's what I used as my daily RSS feed. From Wikipedia: due to "the unforeseen evolution of web and mobile apps and the erosion of the need for the site", whatever that means. While not exactly as strong as a conspiracy theory, I think they were well aware of what they were doing, and RSS was in the "best if absent" feature category.
- randlet 10y agoSame scenario for me. FWIW I switched to using http://www.ighome.com/ http://www.ighome.com/ which more or less replaces the functionality (not affiliated in any way, just a user).