3 ms·

To drive away the core audience, before they shut down the service. Less noise that way.

joebadmo 15y ago
Are you serious? You're really suggesting that they put resources into redesiging a product to integrate with a new product in a cynical maneuver to drive away the current userbase so that when they shut it down later, there will be less complaining about it?
- voidfiles 15y ago
  I am half serious. I think that the investment in Reader is just investment in Google+. So, in away they are no longer investing in it. It may not be an active thought, but they are driving away the core audience. When there traffic starts to dip, and they decide to cut google reader completely. There will be no one left who cares. They will think that no one cared in the first place. They will have forgotten when the destroyed reader for a large number of people.
  - joebadmo 15y ago
    That's a much more reasonable position. But I think it's wrong. Reader is a natural complement to Plus. It's a huge source of link-sharing, which is probably why they wanted to integrate it, so all of that link traffic would populate their new social product. I think we're at the early stage of Google's now fairly routine product release cycle: half-baked. They will quickly iterate, taking user feedback into account, until the product is awesome. I point to Gmail's recent redesign as evidence. I also think that publicly subscribable[0] circles have to be coming soon. I think there's a lot of private sharing that's happening now that doesn't necessarily need to be. Right now private sharing is conflated with directed sharing. With public, but directed sharing, though, you can publicly mine the data, and also use the usage numbers for marketing purposes. Honestly, I'm still holding out hope that Reader will eventually be a full-fledged alternative interface for Plus. [0]: http://blog.byjoemoon.com/post/12261287667/in-defense-of-the-new-google-reader http://blog.byjoemoon.com/post/12261287667/in-defense-of-the...
    - stock_toaster 15y ago
      Reader used to be a great way to link share, not it is largely only unidirectional (sharing out to google+). Perhaps the google '+1' extension is going to be the way they drive that same information into the google+ ecosystem.
    - buddylw 15y ago
      Reader being a "full-fledged alternative interface for Plus" is really the only sane decision at this point. One that would excite me. (I already use fb-rss for reader-Facebook integration.) I hope that's the decision that they made, but I'm not too optimistic at this point. I personally think it would have been smarter to integrate google plus with reader more (even if that involves forking reader) before changing the product and removing sharing. Now we are stuck with an unusable product for an indeterminate amount of time. Due to Google's notoriously poor communication, most won't wait and the community will move elsewhere. It seems like a waste to me and I seriously doubt they had the foresight to predict this level of backlash. I guess we will have to wait an see.

Are you serious? You're really suggesting that they put resources into redesiging a product to integrate with a new product in a cynical maneuver to drive away the current userbase so that when they shut it down later, there will be less complaining about it?

voidfiles 15y ago
I am half serious. I think that the investment in Reader is just investment in Google+. So, in away they are no longer investing in it. It may not be an active thought, but they are driving away the core audience. When there traffic starts to dip, and they decide to cut google reader completely. There will be no one left who cares. They will think that no one cared in the first place. They will have forgotten when the destroyed reader for a large number of people.
- joebadmo 15y ago
  That's a much more reasonable position. But I think it's wrong. Reader is a natural complement to Plus. It's a huge source of link-sharing, which is probably why they wanted to integrate it, so all of that link traffic would populate their new social product. I think we're at the early stage of Google's now fairly routine product release cycle: half-baked. They will quickly iterate, taking user feedback into account, until the product is awesome. I point to Gmail's recent redesign as evidence. I also think that publicly subscribable[0] circles have to be coming soon. I think there's a lot of private sharing that's happening now that doesn't necessarily need to be. Right now private sharing is conflated with directed sharing. With public, but directed sharing, though, you can publicly mine the data, and also use the usage numbers for marketing purposes. Honestly, I'm still holding out hope that Reader will eventually be a full-fledged alternative interface for Plus. [0]: http://blog.byjoemoon.com/post/12261287667/in-defense-of-the-new-google-reader http://blog.byjoemoon.com/post/12261287667/in-defense-of-the...
  - stock_toaster 15y ago
    Reader used to be a great way to link share, not it is largely only unidirectional (sharing out to google+). Perhaps the google '+1' extension is going to be the way they drive that same information into the google+ ecosystem.
  - buddylw 15y ago
    Reader being a "full-fledged alternative interface for Plus" is really the only sane decision at this point. One that would excite me. (I already use fb-rss for reader-Facebook integration.) I hope that's the decision that they made, but I'm not too optimistic at this point. I personally think it would have been smarter to integrate google plus with reader more (even if that involves forking reader) before changing the product and removing sharing. Now we are stuck with an unusable product for an indeterminate amount of time. Due to Google's notoriously poor communication, most won't wait and the community will move elsewhere. It seems like a waste to me and I seriously doubt they had the foresight to predict this level of backlash. I guess we will have to wait an see.