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It is often asked of startup founders 'what if Google starts doing what you do?', a valid question. Perhaps it is worth contemplating products too small for Go
by recuter 14y ago
It is often asked of startup founders 'what if Google starts doing what you do?', a valid question. Perhaps it is worth contemplating products too small for Google to concern themselves with, ones they might abandon, that would still be an attractive opportunity for the rest of us.
I've been rooting for you and recall enjoying the blog posts about its making - I've always figured that "RSS is dead" and there is no longer money in clients (people used to pay for desktop readers!)..
Except that Google would kill Reader eventually and somebody will soak that userbase of nerds right up. And NewsBlur is clearly the top choice and will hopefully occupy similar mindshare as Reader did for us until now. Congrats, well played. :)
I wonder what the next one along these lines will be as now would be a great time to start building it.
- niggler 14y ago" now would be a great time to start building it." Now is too late. The right time to have started building it was 2-6 months ago. Now is the time to market an existing solution. Citing the great gretzky quote, the "puck" is already here.
- recuter 14y agoThe way I see it you have until their next spring cleaning to figure out what they'll axe and make/market it. A couple of months is neither here nor there. I mean-- err, yes, totally too late! Don't worry about it.
- ClintonWu 14y agoWe've been working on something at Skim.Me (http://skim.me http://skim.me) for almost two years now as a replacement for Reader and/or iGoogle. We're still figuring it out but would love anyone looking for a replacement to signup for the next release.
- yagibear 14y agoYou missed the beginning of the sentence: "the next one" = "it", not Google reader
- deleted 14y ago[deleted]
- camdykeman 14y agoCheck out Frontpage, its an RSS reader that lets you browse all your feeds right from your lock screen. No inputting passwords or fumbling through multiple apps. We've been working on it for the past few months. http://www.frontpageapp.com http://www.frontpageapp.com
- baytrailcat 14y agoDamn it! I was working on a replacement which will concentrate on the "catching up" part. Guess I missed a golden opportunity for publicity. Ah well.
- boyter 14y agoIts not as lucrative as you would think. When Google Code Search shut down I launched code search http://searchco.de http://searchco.de and while it got some attention it was nowhere near as much as you would expect. That said I do think that going after markets abandoned by the big guys is an excellent way to go. Usually they abandon it because its not a billion dollar business and isn't worth their time. I believe now that you need to start attacking their market-share before they close the product down and use the closure as a marketing opportunity.
- pyre 14y agoI think that the base of Google Code Search users that would be willing to pay for a replacement is probably dwarfed by the amount of users willing to pay for a Google Reader replacement.
- deleted 14y ago[deleted]
- tejaswiy 14y agoCode search never made sense I think. You could argue stackoverflow / github were the replacements.
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- herewego 14y agoI strongly disagree with this. Much of the world's code is not on GitHub or StackOverflow. This is a much underserved market in my opinion.
- orangethirty 14y ago
- jwarzech 14y agoDefinitely interesting the trend that Google is following, first with iGoogle and now Reader. With backstitch (http://backstit.ch http://backstit.ch) we get questioned a lot why Google is no longer supporting these types of services (and if this means there is no opportunity there since they aren't worried about it anymore). We honestly feel like there is a lot of surface left uncovered when it comes to personalized/streamlined content and it just doesn't seem to be part of Google's refocusing (this has been seen with the shutting down of a lot of their lab projects as well).
- pixelphantom 14y agoTried it out, not really feeling it. Not loading Instapaper and Google Reader articles. I can't find the option to delete my account, which is pretty annoying. How do I delete my account again? Thanks.
- jwarzech 14y agoSorry to hear about that. If you get a chance please shoot an email to team@backstit.ch and we can take a look at fixing the issues you are experiencing or help you with your account further.
- sachingulaya 14y agoSimilarly, who are customers that are neglected by the big players? In my industry merchant accounts are very difficult to come by. We are considered high risk. Even with a year of processing records showing 1 chargeback out of >3k transactions I can't get access to a merchant with decent rates(currently paying 3.7%). All the big players turn us away. There's gold to be mined off the beaten path.
- jhales 14y agoWhich industry is this?