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I still hate Google for killing Reader. I imagine its death was only a minor inconvenience in the US, but it was a sad day for internet freedom in Iran. At the
by smnrchrds 9y ago
I still hate Google for killing Reader. I imagine its death was only a minor inconvenience in the US, but it was a sad day for internet freedom in Iran.
At the time, Iran had for a couple of years implemented an internet censorship platform, blocking access to much of the internet. Nearly all international news agencies (CNN, BBC, NPR, etc.) were inaccessible; so were most of "web 2.0".
Despite the widespread censorship, there was a large active community of independent blogs, non-sanctioned news sites, and small e-publications. The reason this structure could thrive was that even though these websites and weblogs were blocked, they were accessible through Google Reader.
Because of the way Google services were implemented, the government could not block Reader without also blocking GMail and Google Search, which was not an option. As long as authors had a way (like a not-yet-blocked VPN or a friend outside the country they could email to) to post articles, people could read them, like them, comment on them, etc. Iran's censorship was to significant degree neutralized by this setup. The community was large, strong, and thriving. They even had their own jargon: the community was referred to as blogestan [1]; Google Reader was called Gooder, etc.
And then, Google, for some (now obviously incorrect, but ultimately irrelevant to my point) financial calculation, decided to kill Reader. Just like that, overnight, the breadth of the web accessible to an average Iranian decreased by orders of magnitude. The entire community of freethinking authors and their followers disappeared. The only news websites remaining accessible were those sanctioned by the government, pushing the official narrative.
Google put a large nail in the coffin of internet freedom in Iran. For that, I will never forgive them.
[1] with the -stan suffix, https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/-stan https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/-stan
- junnan 9y ago> Because of the way Google services were implemented, the government could not block Reader without also blocking GMail and Google Search, which was not an option. It's interesting that they didn't block gmail and Google search. The Chinese government did that a couple of years ago, which surprisingly didn't cause widespread criticism except among the highly educated group.
- z92 9y agoChina and Russia can write their own google. Smaller nations can't.
- fegul 9y agoHaving lived in a country with similar (and fluctuating) internet restrictions, it's always interesting to see how small design decisions like that can have such significant ramifications on so many people. I remember one SaaS product we wanted to use at our company had one major js file that had the word "proxy" in the title. The product had nothing to do with circumvention or anything but the national internet filters picked up that word and blocked it completely. Thus, we couldn't use that service at all. Although I hate that I can't block YouTube on our metered connections with a URL whitelist as Google logins require calls to accounts.youtube.com.
- kevin_thibedeau 9y agoHow is it Google's responsibility to help you defy your country's onerous laws?
- nine_k 9y agoGoogle declared many times that they do care about freedom of information, do not endorse censorship, etc. If their policies were a bit more cohesive, maybe the people who killed Reader would have remembered these declarations, and maybe decided differently.
- lwhi 9y agoWith grave matters—the things that REALLY count—if you're able to make a difference, then it's your responsibility.