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> This is why Google killed it. Is this true? It certainly doesn't feel like it. Reader was a first party branded reader. Google could put ads on Reader releva

> This is why Google killed it. Is this true? It certainly doesn't feel like it. Reader was a first party branded reader. Google could put ads on Reader relevant to your interests (which they'd have been more keenly aware of than if you weren't using Reader), and they didn't have to pay out the publishers. Google killed Reader, I think, for the second reason you mentioned: publishers were neutering their feeds. Reader had gone from a tool for consuming content to a tool for being notified about content.

DevX101 6y ago
Google would have been rightfully sued to hell and back if they started putting ads in the reader client with no compensation back to the publishers.
- jefftk 6y ago
  Why? Many RSS readers have ads, and the publisher is making their feed available to readers.
slightwinder 6y ago
Google never made an public attempt to show ads in their Reader, unlike GMail. Publisher feeds were also still prospering and widely used when Google killed the reader. It all started to die fast in years after. Also, IIRC they specifically killed it because of Google Plus, which according to their plans should replace Google Reader and the demand for RSS.
nl 6y ago
Google says they killed Reader because of declining usage[1], and there was little reason to doubt that at the time. It's very true that people were switching to mobile consumption and no longer reading lots of news all at once. I was a heavy user of Reader (and did huge amounts of work on RSS/Atom/etc), and I agreed with this assessment at the time. More and more publishers were just putting headlines in RSS, so you had to click through anyway, and commercial blog sites were publishing a much larger volume of content, most of which I ignored. But I didn't want to unsubscribe, because occasionally there was something good. Given that, I was finding much better content through aggregators like HN or via Twitter/FB. Maybe they could have iterated and built something different, but what they had really wasn't useful. [1] https://www.wired.com/2013/06/why-google-reader-got-the-ax/ https://www.wired.com/2013/06/why-google-reader-got-the-ax/
- tannerbrockwell 6y ago
  "In December 2007, Reader linked up with Google Talk (the chat feature in Gmail) to display shared streams from friends. Within the context of feed reading, it fomented something of a Neolithic Revolution. Foragers, hitherto gathering headlines on a crude and solitary basis, became farmers, cultivating streams of information for their neighbors. Sharing increased 25% overnight." [1] [1]: https://www.buzzfeed.com/robf4/googles-lost-social-network https://www.buzzfeed.com/robf4/googles-lost-social-network
  - nl 6y ago
    What they didn't point out there was that feature was a disaster for many users. There was no separation of the chat friends and the people that you followed. I've still got random people in my address books from that debacle.

DevX101 6y ago

Google would have been rightfully sued to hell and back if they started putting ads in the reader client with no compensation back to the publishers.

jefftk 6y ago
Why? Many RSS readers have ads, and the publisher is making their feed available to readers.

slightwinder 6y ago

Google never made an public attempt to show ads in their Reader, unlike GMail. Publisher feeds were also still prospering and widely used when Google killed the reader. It all started to die fast in years after. Also, IIRC they specifically killed it because of Google Plus, which according to their plans should replace Google Reader and the demand for RSS.

nl 6y ago

Google says they killed Reader because of declining usage[1], and there was little reason to doubt that at the time. It's very true that people were switching to mobile consumption and no longer reading lots of news all at once. I was a heavy user of Reader (and did huge amounts of work on RSS/Atom/etc), and I agreed with this assessment at the time. More and more publishers were just putting headlines in RSS, so you had to click through anyway, and commercial blog sites were publishing a much larger volume of content, most of which I ignored. But I didn't want to unsubscribe, because occasionally there was something good. Given that, I was finding much better content through aggregators like HN or via Twitter/FB. Maybe they could have iterated and built something different, but what they had really wasn't useful. [1] https://www.wired.com/2013/06/why-google-reader-got-the-ax/ https://www.wired.com/2013/06/why-google-reader-got-the-ax/

tannerbrockwell 6y ago
"In December 2007, Reader linked up with Google Talk (the chat feature in Gmail) to display shared streams from friends. Within the context of feed reading, it fomented something of a Neolithic Revolution. Foragers, hitherto gathering headlines on a crude and solitary basis, became farmers, cultivating streams of information for their neighbors. Sharing increased 25% overnight." [1] [1]: https://www.buzzfeed.com/robf4/googles-lost-social-network https://www.buzzfeed.com/robf4/googles-lost-social-network
- nl 6y ago
  What they didn't point out there was that feature was a disaster for many users. There was no separation of the chat friends and the people that you followed. I've still got random people in my address books from that debacle.