4 ms·
Google search thrived from the third party websites. RSS incentivized and enabled those third-party websites. By killing the reader and RSS, they helped consoli
by cft 2y ago
Google search thrived from the third party websites. RSS incentivized and enabled those third-party websites. By killing the reader and RSS, they helped consolidate the web into unsearchable walled gardens like Facebook. If those decision makers still work in Google, that's a reason for continuing Google's downfall.
The decision was probably based on two reasons:
1. They wanted users to discover content using their algorithm as opposed to manual subscriptions to RSS thus depriving users of content Discovery agency.
2. They wanted to promote Google
- johnasmith 2y agoThe article suggest that it was neither. That rather it was an engineering decision: the product did not have staffing to be properly maintained, and rather than staff it up, it was easier to turn it down.
- jrm4 2y agoAnd it strikes me as outrageously naive to accept this theory on its face.
- EVyesnoyesnoyes 2y agoThere is no reason at all to assume that the blog post was put in place to put google reader in a better light. And the original comment is weird anyway. Google had billions of views with and without google reader. The normal person doesn't use a RSS Reader at all. Even in my nerdy / tech group not everyone uses one. Feedly apparently hast 15 million users across the world.
- jrm4 2y agoI think there's very good reason to look past one blog post, people, come on. If I am a higher-up executive in Google, I'm not going to much care what the numbers on RSS look like now, it takes less half a brain to understand that Google Reader has at least a CHANCE at chewing into the bottom line hard if it takes off -- even if those chances are slim. I'd kill it quickly as possible. If I can do so early, with little fanfare, even better.
- wasteduniverse 2y ago[dead]
- blitzar 2y agoThe person died from the lack of oxygen going to their brain - it had nothing to do with the person strangling them.
- mistermann 2y agoThey could be exploiting an undocumented/taboo feature of reality: simply telling people a good story can cause them to believe ("There is no reason at all to assume...") things that are not necessarily true.
- bananapub 2y agothat's backwards - organisational/cultural/management decisions made it be under-staffed, which caused the code to rot, which led to the "oh, it's understaffed and the code rotted, let's just kill it".