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I remember being upset about Google Reader for a few months after its death… before moving to one of its many, fuller-featured competitors and carrying on using

I remember being upset about Google Reader for a few months after its death… before moving to one of its many, fuller-featured competitors and carrying on using RSS feeds exactly as before. What upsets me re RSS these days is how many people were apparently so reliant on one reader that they still publicly mourn every time it comes up, 12 years later. Who are these fair-weather feed followers who threw their hands in the air with the loss of exactly one product?

flir 2y ago
GR had some primitive social features that none of the competitors, as far as I know, could replicate. Side-effect of being the largest. Even an exact clone wouldn't behave the same. It was the core of the blogging ecosystem, and IMO its removal was the main cause of blogging falling apart. All so they could clear the way for Google Plus. And look how that turned out. So yeah, watershed moment, the point where the scales fell from my eyes, still justifiably pissed, fool me twice, etc etc etc (Still using RSS daily, though I lapsed for a while).
D13Fd 2y ago
There still is no replacement for Google Reader. The difference is that there was a community around Reader’s social features. That only really works with wide adoption, and it’s a lot easier for people to adopt a Google product than a random company x one. Today, there are many replacements with the mechanical features of browsing & sync, but the community will never come back. The other problem was that Google killing Reader was a signal to the broader web to move away from RSS. RSS has kind of limped along since then.
- baud147258 2y ago
  > The difference is that there was a community around Reader’s social features. Are social features the main selling point of RSS readers? I mean I just use mine to know when there's a new blog post/webcomic posted on a few sites I follow, without having to give my email or use another platform like social media to know about it. And I'd use the social features which are present on the blogs, under the control of the blog owner(s), if there's any. Or maybe my use case is not the most common one? Though I agress about the signal Google sent by killing GR.
ant6n 2y ago
Killing Google Reader killed blogs. You personally can replace Google Reader as a product, but since most people didn't and just sort of moved on to closed platforms, there was less content produced on blogs and less discussion activity on the blog posts that were created after.
- scarface_74 2y ago
  John Gruber of DaringFireball has said his blog has still not recovered completely from the Google Reader shutdown and he has the most popular blog in the Apple ecosystem

flir 2y ago

GR had some primitive social features that none of the competitors, as far as I know, could replicate. Side-effect of being the largest. Even an exact clone wouldn't behave the same. It was the core of the blogging ecosystem, and IMO its removal was the main cause of blogging falling apart. All so they could clear the way for Google Plus. And look how that turned out. So yeah, watershed moment, the point where the scales fell from my eyes, still justifiably pissed, fool me twice, etc etc etc (Still using RSS daily, though I lapsed for a while).

D13Fd 2y ago

There still is no replacement for Google Reader. The difference is that there was a community around Reader’s social features. That only really works with wide adoption, and it’s a lot easier for people to adopt a Google product than a random company x one. Today, there are many replacements with the mechanical features of browsing & sync, but the community will never come back. The other problem was that Google killing Reader was a signal to the broader web to move away from RSS. RSS has kind of limped along since then.

baud147258 2y ago
> The difference is that there was a community around Reader’s social features. Are social features the main selling point of RSS readers? I mean I just use mine to know when there's a new blog post/webcomic posted on a few sites I follow, without having to give my email or use another platform like social media to know about it. And I'd use the social features which are present on the blogs, under the control of the blog owner(s), if there's any. Or maybe my use case is not the most common one? Though I agress about the signal Google sent by killing GR.

ant6n 2y ago

Killing Google Reader killed blogs. You personally can replace Google Reader as a product, but since most people didn't and just sort of moved on to closed platforms, there was less content produced on blogs and less discussion activity on the blog posts that were created after.

scarface_74 2y ago
John Gruber of DaringFireball has said his blog has still not recovered completely from the Google Reader shutdown and he has the most popular blog in the Apple ecosystem