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I'd argue that competitors flourished when Google Reader went down. I still use RSS today. Besides, it's certainly not their responsibility to maintain a serv

I'd argue that competitors flourished when Google Reader went down. I still use RSS today. Besides, it's certainly not their responsibility to maintain a service indefinitely.

eridius 8y ago
It was a close call. For a number of months there it looked like RSS was going to be well and truly dead. The fact that my comment is being downvoted tells me that people here have a shockingly poor memory for this sort of thing. And heck, it's not even the death of Google Reader that was bad for RSS. The life of Google Reader was bad for RSS too. It was a "good enough" product released for free, as in good enough that it wasn't worth trying to compete with a free product so nobody did, but it wasn't actively maintained and just served to cause the entire RSS ecosystem to stagnate for years.
- SquareWheel 8y ago
  Bit of a no-win situation if they're the bad guy for both maintaining and not maintaining the service. :)
  - eridius 8y ago
    Not at all. They could have actually put effort into it. The problem was that they didn't maintain it. They let it languish, staying exactly the same for years, good enough that nobody wanted to compete with a free product but not actually doing anything to improve the RSS ecosystem, so pretty much nothing happened with RSS for years besides it just existing. And then they decided to just shut down Google Reader with a relatively short time frame, because they never figured out how to monetize it. They had 3 perfectly good options: 1. Don't build Google Reader in the first place if they weren't interested in actually maintaining the damn thing. 2. Put some effort into it, keep improving Google Reader, make the whole RSS ecosystem better rather than causing it to stagnate. 3. Sunset Google Reader over a much longer period of time, like a year instead of the 3.5 months they gave. Those 3.5 months were just barely enough time for people to build replacement services.
    - SquareWheel 8y ago
      >The problem was that they didn't maintain it. They let it languish, staying exactly the same for years ... That's what maintenance is though. Keeping something functional, but not developing it further. >... because they never figured out how to monetize it. That's not true. They shut down Reader because the codebase was dated, and there were few engineers left on that team. It was a reallocation of resources. >Sunset Google Reader over a much longer period of time, like a year instead of the 3.5 months they gave. That I agree with.
      - eridius 8y ago
        Maintain has multiple accepted usages. But I'm not interested in playing word games. > They shut down Reader because the codebase was dated, and there were few engineers left on that team. It was a reallocation of resources. And why did they reallocate resources? Because they never figured out how to monetize it.
kkarakk 8y ago
RSS is essentially on life support. every website that supports it hides the functionality a couple of clicks deep(where newbs won't think to go) whereas pre-google reader it was front and center
- SquareWheel 8y ago
  RSS feeds are linked in meta tags. You simply point it at the frontpage (or blog) of the site and it'll find it. There doesn't need to be a visible RSS button on the page.

I'd argue that competitors flourished when Google Reader went down. I still use RSS today. Besides, it's certainly not their responsibility to maintain a service indefinitely.

eridius 8y ago

It was a close call. For a number of months there it looked like RSS was going to be well and truly dead. The fact that my comment is being downvoted tells me that people here have a shockingly poor memory for this sort of thing. And heck, it's not even the death of Google Reader that was bad for RSS. The life of Google Reader was bad for RSS too. It was a "good enough" product released for free, as in good enough that it wasn't worth trying to compete with a free product so nobody did, but it wasn't actively maintained and just served to cause the entire RSS ecosystem to stagnate for years.

SquareWheel 8y ago
Bit of a no-win situation if they're the bad guy for both maintaining and not maintaining the service. :)
- eridius 8y ago
  Not at all. They could have actually put effort into it. The problem was that they didn't maintain it. They let it languish, staying exactly the same for years, good enough that nobody wanted to compete with a free product but not actually doing anything to improve the RSS ecosystem, so pretty much nothing happened with RSS for years besides it just existing. And then they decided to just shut down Google Reader with a relatively short time frame, because they never figured out how to monetize it. They had 3 perfectly good options: 1. Don't build Google Reader in the first place if they weren't interested in actually maintaining the damn thing. 2. Put some effort into it, keep improving Google Reader, make the whole RSS ecosystem better rather than causing it to stagnate. 3. Sunset Google Reader over a much longer period of time, like a year instead of the 3.5 months they gave. Those 3.5 months were just barely enough time for people to build replacement services.
  - SquareWheel 8y ago
    >The problem was that they didn't maintain it. They let it languish, staying exactly the same for years ... That's what maintenance is though. Keeping something functional, but not developing it further. >... because they never figured out how to monetize it. That's not true. They shut down Reader because the codebase was dated, and there were few engineers left on that team. It was a reallocation of resources. >Sunset Google Reader over a much longer period of time, like a year instead of the 3.5 months they gave. That I agree with.
    - eridius 8y ago
      Maintain has multiple accepted usages. But I'm not interested in playing word games. > They shut down Reader because the codebase was dated, and there were few engineers left on that team. It was a reallocation of resources. And why did they reallocate resources? Because they never figured out how to monetize it.

kkarakk 8y ago

RSS is essentially on life support. every website that supports it hides the functionality a couple of clicks deep(where newbs won't think to go) whereas pre-google reader it was front and center

SquareWheel 8y ago
RSS feeds are linked in meta tags. You simply point it at the frontpage (or blog) of the site and it'll find it. There doesn't need to be a visible RSS button on the page.