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Former Reader PM here, no longer at Google. Having fought many times to keep Reader alive, it's worth considering whether a large enough outcry would lead them

Former Reader PM here, no longer at Google. Having fought many times to keep Reader alive, it's worth considering whether a large enough outcry would lead them to reconsider. White House Petition!

zanny 14y ago
Dear Mr President, you must use an executive order to stop Google from shutting down the reader service. Thanks, ~everyone.
anigbrowl 14y ago
Within the limits of confidentiality and business ethics, can you explain what the issues are in a situation like this? I agree with other readers above that Reader is probably a poor source of ad clicks and thus direct revenue, but it seems like it would offer invaluable forward intelligence for Google (just as searches for 'influenza' and 'flu' have proved to be excellent leading epidemiological indicators). ISTM that the value proposition for Google was in mining the behavior of Reader users to identify what would be interesting/ popular/ important a week or a month from now, and would help to optimize the value of keyword searches etc in adwords.
- nickbaum 14y ago
  As a stand-alone product, Google Reader could easily have justified continued investment and headcount. The problem is that internally you're competing for resources against products with (a) tons of users (Gmail), (b) tons of revenue (AdWords), (c) high strategic priority (Android, Google+). To justify staffing a smaller product, you have to argue that it has the potential to be as big as the other products, and that the marginal impact of an engineer is higher on an under-staffed product.
  - anigbrowl 14y ago
    Sounds like the unwritten correlate of that is that you can't measure what you don't build, and without the measurements you don't get to build. I wonder what magic econometric fairy dust grants a project high strategic priority.
rachelbythebay 14y ago
Considering how much effectiveness an internal campaign (RNCH) had at changing things (none), I think this would be a waste of time.
meej 14y ago
I actually know someone who did this, hahahaha. https://petitions.whitehouse.gov/petition/tell-google-not-discontinue-google-reader/ChtzMkLf https://petitions.whitehouse.gov/petition/tell-google-not-di...

Former Reader PM here, no longer at Google. Having fought many times to keep Reader alive, it's worth considering whether a large enough outcry would lead them to reconsider. White House Petition!

zanny 14y ago

Dear Mr President, you must use an executive order to stop Google from shutting down the reader service. Thanks, ~everyone.

anigbrowl 14y ago

Within the limits of confidentiality and business ethics, can you explain what the issues are in a situation like this? I agree with other readers above that Reader is probably a poor source of ad clicks and thus direct revenue, but it seems like it would offer invaluable forward intelligence for Google (just as searches for 'influenza' and 'flu' have proved to be excellent leading epidemiological indicators). ISTM that the value proposition for Google was in mining the behavior of Reader users to identify what would be interesting/ popular/ important a week or a month from now, and would help to optimize the value of keyword searches etc in adwords.

nickbaum 14y ago
As a stand-alone product, Google Reader could easily have justified continued investment and headcount. The problem is that internally you're competing for resources against products with (a) tons of users (Gmail), (b) tons of revenue (AdWords), (c) high strategic priority (Android, Google+). To justify staffing a smaller product, you have to argue that it has the potential to be as big as the other products, and that the marginal impact of an engineer is higher on an under-staffed product.
- anigbrowl 14y ago
  Sounds like the unwritten correlate of that is that you can't measure what you don't build, and without the measurements you don't get to build. I wonder what magic econometric fairy dust grants a project high strategic priority.

rachelbythebay 14y ago

Considering how much effectiveness an internal campaign (RNCH) had at changing things (none), I think this would be a waste of time.

meej 14y ago

I actually know someone who did this, hahahaha. https://petitions.whitehouse.gov/petition/tell-google-not-discontinue-google-reader/ChtzMkLf https://petitions.whitehouse.gov/petition/tell-google-not-di...