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I think it was the first thing they'd killed which had been around for quite a while, still had devoted users, and Google didn't offer a replacement. If you loo

I think it was the first thing they'd killed which had been around for quite a while, still had devoted users, and Google didn't offer a replacement. If you look at the graveyard, the pre-Reader things they killed were things which had flopped (e.g. Buzz), things which were no longer relevant (e.g Gears), acquisitions, and mergers where they had two redundant products (e.g. Google Video).

srcreigh 4y ago
I wasn’t reader user, but it seems to me like when advertising self interest took over
- dmix 4y ago
  Meh the ad business was pretty established well before 2013 when Reader shut down. RSS was declining well before that. Google acquired Doubleclick in 2008 aka what became the real Adwords in its prime. I personally don't expect tech conglomerates to be the ideal solution for niche markets. But I don't see many people providing good arguments why alternatives like Feedly didn't take off if there was really a strong market demand for RSS. And I say that was an uber-fan of RSS back in the day.
  - dirtyid 4y ago
    I wonder how feedly is doing, their higher tier plans focusing on enterprise/analysis/teams suggest the demand for rss still among power users / consumers.
    - pinkano 4y ago
      Hi, this is Petr from Feedly, we're doing really well and yes, our focus shifted towards Enterprise - Threat Intelligence and Market Intelligence use cases. Individual users can use our Pro+ plan to access Feedly AI to leverage the power of searching through RSS feeds to get the signals more easily and quickly.
  - pvorb 4y ago
    Yeah. I think what really killed RSS was a change in people's behavior. Twitter, Reddit, and other social media sites gained traction as link sharing communities and RSS became less relevant after that. Instead of subscribing to an RSS feed, you could just follow your favorite sites on Twitter, for example.
    - igetspam 4y ago
      Did RSS die??? (I get HN headlines via RSS)
      - JohnFen 4y ago
        Not for me. It's still the primary way that I stay up to date on the web.
        dmix 4y ago
        A market dying might not mean what you think it means then.
      - pvorb 4y ago
        My usage went downhill, but long after the death of Google Reader. RSS didn't really die, but it never went into mainstream either.
    - scarface74 4y ago
      How is RSS even dead today? I can’t think of a useful site that doesn’t still have an RSS feed - including Reddit.
      - dmix 4y ago
        That's like saying "how is IRC dead today" when Slack/Discord/WhatsApp/Zoom/etc exists or Yahoo style portals when Google exists (yes Yahoo is still a real business) or "how are horses a dead transportation" when cars exist in 1930s America because horses can still walk on roads (aka takes a minimal investment to support). Sure they still work and will continue to work but let's be honest it's a super niche technology and it didn't survive/flourish because it was flawed and fundamentally nerdy option people stopped caring about. Supporting RSS takes the bare minimum of effort. Yet even in 2013 (aka a decade ago) RSS was declining in usage before Reader was killed. I support open platforms but RSS had a super noise-to-signal UX and I personally don't miss it. Google didn't kill RSS, they killed the best RSS product at the time and accelerated a dying protocol that would still be only used by HN's demographic and little else.
  - acdha 4y ago
    I think the bug factor was Facebook. There were places making money selling ads in feeds but they weren’t making within an order of magnitude what Facebook promised. Google+ was a botched reaction to that but I do wonder what Google could have done embracing the open web instead and actually trying to monetize Reader or provide top-notch feed ads. It might not have made Facebook-level rates but it also wouldn’t have soured a generation on their business.
erik_seaberg 4y ago
Despite the prior “more wood behind fewer arrows” announcement, it might be the first time Google killed something that was popular with Googlers. I think it was an “Elves leave Middle-Earth” moment for my friends on campus. Memegen was full of “we can launch (ultradoomed project) but can’t keep Reader alive?” snark, less good-natured than usual. I’ve heard it blamed on Vic and G+, actual security issues from scraping Javascript, or just falling behind on the promo-driven infra treadmill that threatens everything mature. https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1007750 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1007750
- whatshisface 4y ago
  I haven't heard the phrase "more wood behind fewer arrows" before, but I am pretty sure that never in the history of the evolution of projectiles was that tradeoff ever taken in that direction.
  - gwern 4y ago
    When you get serious like the Romans about putting more wood behind fewer arrows: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ballista https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ballista
  - saurik 4y ago
    That's what makes it so amazing!!! It was a delicious self-parody. I remember reading it and thinking it made absolutely no sense as a metaphor: just imagine the poor archer being told "instead of having 15 arrows to take with you today, we've decided to give you three really heavy arrows"... that was the announcement that really made Google product management feel like a laughing stock to me, and is what I return to thinking about every time they kill another project. https://googleblog.blogspot.com/2011/07/more-wood-behind-fewer-arrows.html https://googleblog.blogspot.com/2011/07/more-wood-behind-few...
    - synu 4y ago
      I always thought it was something like a comparison between ballistae with fewer shots and larger arrows (javelin size, really) doing more damage, and a storm of smaller regular arrows. Maybe I was being too generous with my interpretation.
wyclif 4y ago
I thought that Google Wave had a lot of unrealised potential, in addition to Reader. Still sorry they killed that, too.
- chaosite 4y ago
  But Wave was not a mature product when it was killed, it was still basically a tech demo. Killing it just wasn't as painful.
  - mft_ 4y ago
    Indeed; it felt magical, but was a solution in search of a problem... which was ultimately found in Google Docs having very similar live editing ability.
    - askvictor 4y ago
      Also its rollout was done in the most ridiculous way possible. For a product that relies on your workmates or friends to have access, they didn't let those workmates or friends have access. Then by the time they did, the hype had worn off, and people had moved elsewhere.
      - igetspam 4y ago
        I can't tell if you're talking about internal rollout of public because the same problems existed internally. One person on your team would request it because they bought the hype but not everyone had access so only that one person would play with it and the social aspect of it just wasn't there. I tried to make it useful for a couple weeks but my impression at the end was the same as when they did the TGIF demo: mostly pointless fluff.
      - LambdaComplex 4y ago
        So, pretty much exactly what happened with Google+?

srcreigh 4y ago

I wasn’t reader user, but it seems to me like when advertising self interest took over

dmix 4y ago
Meh the ad business was pretty established well before 2013 when Reader shut down. RSS was declining well before that. Google acquired Doubleclick in 2008 aka what became the real Adwords in its prime. I personally don't expect tech conglomerates to be the ideal solution for niche markets. But I don't see many people providing good arguments why alternatives like Feedly didn't take off if there was really a strong market demand for RSS. And I say that was an uber-fan of RSS back in the day.
- dirtyid 4y ago
  I wonder how feedly is doing, their higher tier plans focusing on enterprise/analysis/teams suggest the demand for rss still among power users / consumers.
  - pinkano 4y ago
    Hi, this is Petr from Feedly, we're doing really well and yes, our focus shifted towards Enterprise - Threat Intelligence and Market Intelligence use cases. Individual users can use our Pro+ plan to access Feedly AI to leverage the power of searching through RSS feeds to get the signals more easily and quickly.
- pvorb 4y ago
  Yeah. I think what really killed RSS was a change in people's behavior. Twitter, Reddit, and other social media sites gained traction as link sharing communities and RSS became less relevant after that. Instead of subscribing to an RSS feed, you could just follow your favorite sites on Twitter, for example.
  - igetspam 4y ago
    Did RSS die??? (I get HN headlines via RSS)
    - JohnFen 4y ago
      Not for me. It's still the primary way that I stay up to date on the web.
      - dmix 4y ago
        A market dying might not mean what you think it means then.
    - pvorb 4y ago
      My usage went downhill, but long after the death of Google Reader. RSS didn't really die, but it never went into mainstream either.
  - scarface74 4y ago
    How is RSS even dead today? I can’t think of a useful site that doesn’t still have an RSS feed - including Reddit.
    - dmix 4y ago
      That's like saying "how is IRC dead today" when Slack/Discord/WhatsApp/Zoom/etc exists or Yahoo style portals when Google exists (yes Yahoo is still a real business) or "how are horses a dead transportation" when cars exist in 1930s America because horses can still walk on roads (aka takes a minimal investment to support). Sure they still work and will continue to work but let's be honest it's a super niche technology and it didn't survive/flourish because it was flawed and fundamentally nerdy option people stopped caring about. Supporting RSS takes the bare minimum of effort. Yet even in 2013 (aka a decade ago) RSS was declining in usage before Reader was killed. I support open platforms but RSS had a super noise-to-signal UX and I personally don't miss it. Google didn't kill RSS, they killed the best RSS product at the time and accelerated a dying protocol that would still be only used by HN's demographic and little else.
- acdha 4y ago
  I think the bug factor was Facebook. There were places making money selling ads in feeds but they weren’t making within an order of magnitude what Facebook promised. Google+ was a botched reaction to that but I do wonder what Google could have done embracing the open web instead and actually trying to monetize Reader or provide top-notch feed ads. It might not have made Facebook-level rates but it also wouldn’t have soured a generation on their business.

erik_seaberg 4y ago

Despite the prior “more wood behind fewer arrows” announcement, it might be the first time Google killed something that was popular with Googlers. I think it was an “Elves leave Middle-Earth” moment for my friends on campus. Memegen was full of “we can launch (ultradoomed project) but can’t keep Reader alive?” snark, less good-natured than usual. I’ve heard it blamed on Vic and G+, actual security issues from scraping Javascript, or just falling behind on the promo-driven infra treadmill that threatens everything mature. https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1007750 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1007750

whatshisface 4y ago
I haven't heard the phrase "more wood behind fewer arrows" before, but I am pretty sure that never in the history of the evolution of projectiles was that tradeoff ever taken in that direction.
- gwern 4y ago
  When you get serious like the Romans about putting more wood behind fewer arrows: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ballista https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ballista
- saurik 4y ago
  That's what makes it so amazing!!! It was a delicious self-parody. I remember reading it and thinking it made absolutely no sense as a metaphor: just imagine the poor archer being told "instead of having 15 arrows to take with you today, we've decided to give you three really heavy arrows"... that was the announcement that really made Google product management feel like a laughing stock to me, and is what I return to thinking about every time they kill another project. https://googleblog.blogspot.com/2011/07/more-wood-behind-fewer-arrows.html https://googleblog.blogspot.com/2011/07/more-wood-behind-few...
  - synu 4y ago
    I always thought it was something like a comparison between ballistae with fewer shots and larger arrows (javelin size, really) doing more damage, and a storm of smaller regular arrows. Maybe I was being too generous with my interpretation.

wyclif 4y ago

I thought that Google Wave had a lot of unrealised potential, in addition to Reader. Still sorry they killed that, too.

chaosite 4y ago
But Wave was not a mature product when it was killed, it was still basically a tech demo. Killing it just wasn't as painful.
- mft_ 4y ago
  Indeed; it felt magical, but was a solution in search of a problem... which was ultimately found in Google Docs having very similar live editing ability.
  - askvictor 4y ago
    Also its rollout was done in the most ridiculous way possible. For a product that relies on your workmates or friends to have access, they didn't let those workmates or friends have access. Then by the time they did, the hype had worn off, and people had moved elsewhere.
    - igetspam 4y ago
      I can't tell if you're talking about internal rollout of public because the same problems existed internally. One person on your team would request it because they bought the hype but not everyone had access so only that one person would play with it and the social aspect of it just wasn't there. I tried to make it useful for a couple weeks but my impression at the end was the same as when they did the TGIF demo: mostly pointless fluff.
    - LambdaComplex 4y ago
      So, pretty much exactly what happened with Google+?