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Chief Architect of Google+ requests clarification on Google Reader
- milkbikis 14y agoAnyone know what happened to G+'s Sparks? I think it was touted as a reader replacement.
- martinced 14y ago"Comments which disregard the previous paragraph will simply be deleted. Comments complaining about my deleting those comments will result in me blocking and/or mercilessly mocking you for failing to read instructions. Comments complaining about that will lead to some interesting replies in a combination of languages, probably starting with Yiddish and moving on from there." I just love this offensive/defensive writing style: Nicholas Nassim Taleb does the same, all the time, throughout his books (and I'm a big Taleb fan). I've noticed that people with strong ego typically hate that kind of writing that said.
- MatthewPhillips 14y agoDo the benefits of an RSS reader really need explanation? Or is he simply hoping to hear some unexpected input from this?
- jcomis 14y agoHe's asking for specific elements of the reader that people found useful, enjoyable, easy to use. I'd say that's valuable. How is it not?
- nicksergeant 14y agoSo like, the "Subscribe" button, and the list view? That's what was useful. I really don't get what he's aiming for here... obscure features that may have existed that only some people thought were useful?
- deleted 14y ago[deleted]
- Semaphor 14y agoWeirdly enough, none of the readers I tested can replicate that. Qbix (list-view takes too much space, not available in "show all") and The Old Reader (no equal indent blog name -> post title in all view, shows no text snippets in list view) come closest. Especially TOR looks like a great replacement but it's still pretty overloaded. > There are 25746 users in the import queue ahead of you. And it has no "Export" as of right now. edit: Formatting
- Semaphor 14y agoOkay, why did I write Qbix? What I meant was bazqux [1] and I just got a mail that list view in all is now available and they are thinking about offering a more condensed view :) [1] http://bazqux.com/ http://bazqux.com/
- MatthewPhillips 14y agoNo, I agree, I just hope he doesn't hear "I liked that the list of feeds is on the left" and think that's the takeaway. Not that, you know, it's an RSS reader that people had gotten used to.
- zoowar 14y agoWhy doesn't he just ask the google reader staff?
- scott_s 14y agoDevelopers and designers don't necessarily know what their users like.
- AndrewDucker 14y agoDifferent people appreciate different things. Some of the use cases that people are glowing about leave me cold. It never hurts to ask, you can always be surprised.
- NegativeK 14y agoI interpreted the post as "Why does everyone care about Google Reader? Why Google's instead of the myriad of other available RSS services?"
- erehweb 14y agoInteresting, but doesn't speak too well of Google. Shouldn't Google know how people were using Google Reader before deciding to axe it? And even if that information's in a different part of the company, shouldn't the chief architect of Google+ have access to it?
- eric_cc 14y agoWell regardless of what data google has about Reader's use... the best way to really understand how people used it is to ask.
- erehweb 14y agoThe asking should come before the axeing.
- deleted 14y ago[deleted]
- ajross 14y agoSurely you "have access" to wikipedia, so therefore nothing there will surprise you, right? This doesn't sound so weird to me. No one was working on Google Reader. The traffic to the web app was negligible. It generated little to no revenue. And even the API traffic probably didn't amount to much. It just wasn't on the radar. The fact that got missed wasn't that Reader was a popular app, it simply wasn't, period. What they missed is the demographics: the specific people who relied on Reader, though few in number, are disproportionately loud and influential tech leaders and journalists. So they were shocked at the outrage.
- nicksergeant 14y agoYeah, I really don't understand what he's looking for here. He wants constructive criticism about what parts of Google Reader were useful, but if you complain at all, your comment will be deleted. Google Reader itself was the useful piece. It aggregates RSS feeds. I don't really know how else you can explain that "yes, it aggregated RSS feeds, and I like to read all of my RSS feeds in one place".
- mcrittenden 14y agoI think he's asking what about Reader specifically made it more useful than the dozens of other RSS readers out there.
- masklinn 14y agoUI-less sync scheme between numerous devices, simpler application backends as the work of actually aggregating (querying and parsing feeds, notifying, ...) was handled by Reader and the client just had to implement a UI to that.
- ditojim 14y agoi also think this line of thinking is silly. the Googler is assuming a set of features is what made Google Reader the best RSS reader on the market. while that is true in essence (features do add up to the overall product) i don't think any 1 feature in reader was killer. rather, the collection of all the features made the app itself killer.
- rachelbythebay 14y agoIn Mountain View, all problems are engineering problems. Even when they aren't.
- r00fus 14y agoAll I can gather from Google's recent moves is: "useful != profitable"... and Google's more interested in profit than utility now.
- eric_cc 14y agoTo answer his ?: Sort By Magic! Sort By Magic is the one Reader feature that I don't see any replacement taking care of.
- reader5000 14y agoG+ can't be google reader for two reasons: 1. Information density. Magazine style / tiles / graphics etc aren't the same as single line expandable headline with maybe 40 headlines visible per screen height. 2. Just the content. Reader didn't try to guess what you wanted to read or notify you what your friends were up to.
- AndyNemmity 14y agoThe guessing and notifying that youtube keeps wanting to push is so annoying. At some point they have to learn that what are friends like has no relevance on what we like.
- Evbn 14y agoYes. If Google wants to satisfy Reader users, they have to push back against G+ taking over everything. G+ is supposed to br about a seamless integration between products. Making all the features subservient to the Stream is putting style --no, fashion-- over substance. That is the philosophy of G+, though-- to cannibalize Google into a Facebook clone. G+ is like the evil vizier whispering in the senile monarch's ear.
- shrikant 14y ago..and you know what? I like text. I 'circled' a bunch of people from the numerous Hacker News communities on G+, and I see far too many pictures and videos in the feed. And mostly personal life stuff, like their pets, or lunch, or some trees or whatever. (This is also my current complaint with App.net, but that's a different story). I really wish there were a way to filter by post type (text and links only) in Google+, to bring it even one small step closer to replacing Reader.
- mhb 14y agoIt would also be nice to be able to filter out videos in Picasa. Why do I want to be seeing those mixed in with my photos?
- SkyMarshal 14y agoThis was my biggest problem with G+ and why I haven't used it since last year sometime. Facebook by comparison is a network of people you know irl, so you kinda care what random stuff they're up to. G+ on the other hand is more like long-form Twitter where you subscribe to people, whether you know them irl or not. Its network based more on shared interest than real life connection. But when people you've subscribed to because you're interested in what they have to say about programming start sharing their vacation pictures and other personal stuff, it can quickly fill up your news feed with noise. It would be really nice if G+ could implement tagging and filtering by tag, or some ML that learns what to suppress in your feed from whom, or something along those lines. Anything to enable people to continue posting whatever they want, but to allow their followers to selectively receive only the portion they're interested in.
- jcampbell1 14y agoIf you don't like what is being said, change the conversation. Nice try buddy, I'm not falling into that trap.
- saraid216 14y agoNope. You're falling into a different one.
- Symmetry 14y agoYou know, there's more than one person who works at Google. There are even multiple departments! So while it might seem that when "Google" says that it's removing Google Reader and then "Google" asks what we thought was good about Google Reader it's someone changing the subject, it isn't really.
- jcampbell1 14y agoGoogle can be damn stupid sometimes. They shutdown Google Reader which is used daily by every journalist on the planet. This resulted in a ton of bad press which was completely foreseeable. Now they have some chieftain try to change the conversation into "Tell me what you loved about Reader", under the guise that they will use your comment to help make better products. As if Google has no data on how people use Google Reader. What is funny is how many lemmings are falling into his trap.
- scott_s 14y agoYou assume that these actions were coordinated, and that all individuals in Google know about, and act on, a single vision.
- roc 14y agoHis assumption only requires the group that's replacing Google Reader to have been aware of and involved in the effort to replace Google Reader. Which seems pretty reasonable.
- javajosh 14y agoThere is a much simpler explanation: the lead of one project is looking to improve his project however he can. In this case, he sees the ruckus over Reader as a chance to get a bunch of feature requests. It's kind of like a vulture picking over a carcass, but hey, circle of life and all that. It's important to remember that to Google products like Reader are blips on the radar. Every second they spent scheming about Reader cost them millions in Ad Sense revenue; hence, there was no scheming.
- roc 14y agoI would find it difficult to believe that Google+ wouldn't have already been looking into getting news feed subscriptions into their product. An RSS-style solution with discoverability would leap-frog Facebook's News stuff and could even put them into quasi-competition with Twitter. It seems an inevitable sort of feature. So the idea that they were surprised by this and are going to start from zero to build a new bit of G+ seems... a stretch.
- bdz 14y agoThe cache. Opening up any feed and going back in years. And it works with broken sites too! Even if the content of the original site is gone, you can easily read it. Nothing can replace this feature... Does Newsblur or any other RSS reader have this?
- TillE 14y agoYes. This is the irreplaceable, unique value of Google Reader. Even if other services start archiving feed history now, only Google has the data from years ago. And I'm not terribly optimistic about them releasing all the historical information they have in one huge download, which would be the appropriate way to preserve it.
- pointernil 14y agoAre there any exploitation available reg. WHY they are closing it down? Either the users being loud about it are a minority (it that case ok close it, deal with it etc.) OR they are not, and in that case I'm wondering: When did Google lose its sense for the needs of users on the internet? and What is the problem google as an enterprise is having with the service staying alive... as at the same time g+ currently simply can not replace g-reader for its users. Strange.
- wmf 14y agoGoogle is shutting down everything that has fewer than ~50M users.
- EGreg 14y agoHey guys. We at Qbix are thinking about building something like Google Reader, that's universal, works on your phone, etc. We've been building a next-gen framework that can handle all that stuff, including subscriptions, notifications, etc. and this seems like the perfect project to apply it to. Let's take all this enthusiasm about Google Reader and not just save it, but make it into a community project that we can host online. If you are developer who is proficient with PHP and Node.js, reach out to me if you might be interested in joining the project -- you can find my email at http://qbix.com/about http://qbix.com/about
- joedevon 14y agoGoogle Reader was a great RSS reader without being hobbled by social. How is he gonna add that to Google+?
- joonix 14y agoIt worked. It was minimal. I could click RSS on a site and subscribe. It was part of Google which I'm always working in. I stopped using the site, but I'd scroll through the widget on my Android phone every day. I don't need "features," I just need to consume my feed without thought.
- blart 14y agoReader costs too much money, charge a farking subscription. I will pay $5 / month to have access. Not everything needs to be free
- julien 14y agoWhat a joke. I was specucalting that Google killed reader to promote G+. That's now obvious. On other words, they shut down an open product to promote the closest of all social web platforms.
- jbigelow76 14y agoFrom the Google guy's post... " I'd like to integrate those ideas into future versions of many Google products, and try to capture that value." ... ugh. No! I don't want all that crap pieced out across many different apps. Just give me a damn reader. Charge me for it or use my reading habits to inform ad targeting, I don't care, just find a business justification to keep it around. Don't try and put some half-assed version in G+ or Youtube or gmail or wherever.
- tmzt 14y agoI think the real reason user numbers haven't grown as rapidly as expected could be the difficulty introducing it to a new user. I've tried to explain how powerful it is, how it centrally gathers so many diverse publications, how it gives a new perspective on global events or political sensitive topics. But it's a blank screen, the welcome wizard is helpful (I started with Apple and Google collections and quickly added Planet Gnome and Mozilla), but it's not the same. Google+ is a product that tries to do everything, but makes the simplest things difficult. After Buzz, Google made discovery impossible, so G+ users accumulate very slowly. I'd like to "subscribe" to a circle, say Linux kernel or Node.js developers, but instead I have to get linked to someones G+ from somewhere like here and then follow just that user. I should be able to subscribe to that entire circle with one click, and have it appear as a subgroup on the left sidebar, and the, Presto, we have 50% of Google Reader. I would suggest Reader be replaced (if it must) with G+ Curator, a reader for feeds including RSS and Atom, but also G+ Circles, third party feeds like Twitter or Tumbler (if possible), mayabe Google Groups or even a gmail filter. I would use the Reader API for this, it's basically an atom feed aggregator, and could convert all those other inputs into Atom feeds the same as it does Atom and RSS today. I would translate the current feed IDs into G+ ids. The problem with Google dropping RSS is it basically kills the prospect of sites bothering with RSS, they look to Tumblr and the like and think there's something there, but they find they can't easily browse other feeds, and it becomes like Facebook (now), a mess of pithy sayings and 'viral' photographs that people probably don't bother to read. Then, at some point Tumblr (or some other site) shuts down and the community goes with it, the orgranization is lost and the users find something else to waste their time on. But really, unless Google looks at fixing problems with G+ and makes it something that people want to use, we'll be not talking about it's shutdown a year or two from now
- xradionut 14y agoWow! Google appears to be out of touch if they haven't actively been doing user research and surveys. Makes me wonder if it's not arrogance...
- rtwtlkj 14y ago>>Makes me wonder if it's not arrogance... Trying to parse this sentence, you are implying that you thought their actions could be explained by arrogance and now you think it is something else. Correct?
- xradionut 14y agoI'm not sure if it's arrogance or ignorance. Consider that Google has access to an extreme amount of user data and usage data. Did they analyzed that, then draw conclusions? Did they "assume" they knew best, since they are some of the smartest folks around? Actually asking users for opinions after the deciding to shut Reader down and getting a backlash seems to be a misstep on their part...
- gdso 14y agoThis is one of the most tone deaf requests for feedback I've ever seen. Astonishing.
- tbatchelli 14y agoWhat I find most interesting from this post is his belated admission of the brokenness of G+ when he writes "(NB: If you're seeing this via a reshare, please remember to comment on the original post if you want me to see what you're saying!)"...
- loxs 14y agoYeah, go write a wall of text, just in order to receive "you are not allowed to comment on this post" after you hit the "comment" button. Bravo G+, you bring us real value.
- dccoolgai 14y agoWhat a great idea!! Getting feedback to incorporate into the next Google product! Whatever it is, I can't wait to start incorporating it into my daily workflow...I know they would never yank it or take it down, right? They are totally dependable!! </sarcasm> Seriously, I was getting close to using G+ once in a while for things...now I will never, and I'll think twice before using any Google product on a regular basis. Dependability matters.
- polskibus 14y agoHow can anyone expect serious and fair treatment when half of their post is threatening what he'll do with posts that don't conform to his specification? Trolling everyone in advance is not a good strategy for gathering feedback from community. If he can't face the regrets of the community, he should just keep his mouth shut, have a bit more respect towards others.
- unconed 14y agoBecause people on the internet are dumb, especially when talking to someone from a big company like Google. Who decided to stop providing a particular service for free.
- epenn 14y agoIt's been quite a while since I've used Google Reader since my reliance on RSS in general has decreased over the last couple years. However, for anyone who still uses Reader on a regular basis who might be able to comment on this, I think Yonatan might be missing the point. It seems he's looking to incorporate individual features/aspects of Reader into G+ in order to woo newly disenfranchised users back into the Google ecosystem. The problem is that I think this is a case where the whole is greater than the sum of its parts. Even if he incorporated a large subset of Reader features into G+, I think at best that would likely only capture the wants of a small fraction of the Reader user base given that both products have inherently different goals. G+ is, depending on how you look at it, either a full-fledged social network or a central identity service connecting various components of the Google ecosystem. Reader is a dedicated, decentralized (in the sense that the feeds themselves come from outside Google) RSS consumer. Both products seemingly have different philosophical approaches to the web (walled-garden vs. generally open) and I'm not sure that can be reconciled so easily. These musings are off the top of my head though, so I'd love to hear thoughts from any avid Reader users and/or G+ engineers/users who agree/disagree.
- gingerlime 14y agoI know reader was a free product that probably didn't make Google any money, but I find this plea for feedback on the back of the reader kill a little odd. Especially with the accompanying tone. Feels something like: "We're sorry that we took away your child support benefits, but can you give us some feedback on how we can improve our social services to the community? (any feedback about the withdrawal of child support will be ignored). Child Support Services. We listen."
- bane 14y agoWhat we liked is that it was Reader and not Google+
- bumbledraven 14y agoGreat comment from AJ Kohn on that thread (I don't know how to link directly to his post, unfortunately): The Reader interface was pragmatic and efficient so it appealed to those, like me, who are information consumers. At the heart of it all are two main points: Time-Shifted Consumption and Deliverability It's never been about having real-time access to information. It's about time-shifting the consumption and knowing that I will see that content at some point in time if I desire. Feeds are to Reader as Season Passes are to TiVo. (As an aside, the latter is the model that should have been marketed to users.) Using other methods such as G+ or Twitter or Facebook or any other mechanism that tries to find, shape and filter the information based on interest etc. are usually not comprehensive and rarely allow me the comfort of knowing I can rely on reviewing whether or not I value that content. In short, I might not see it fly by in my stream and curation services might remove content that I may enjoy. ===== In the same thread, Rob Ferguson writes: Not specific to Reader, but regarding RSS (even Twitter to some extent), the multi-feed publish/subscribe model allows people to create separate feeds that each represent a facet of their personality, something they want to say. While the single-output model of G+ or Facebook has some advantages, e.g. seeing the 'whole person', the trade off is that you can't really specialise or segment content. ===== Nelson Minar writes: So I'd say the main value of Google Reader in the last year has been the very fast centralized feed crawler, along with its API that made it easy to put more modern UIs on top of Google's RSS reader infrastructure
- lubujackson 14y agoSo the chief architect of Google+ wants to know why people used Google Reader? Can't he ask Google employees who should know this because they built the damn thing and documented their challenges and findings? Or read the most upvoted complaints on open forums like HN or Reddit? Especially since he's architecting an ahem social product, shouldn't he already be comfortable doing that? And shouldn't he value the diversity of those responses more than those from Google+ buddies? I guess "dogfooding" has become more valuable than understanding. Finally, my favorite "Zune" moment: "NB: The comments have filled up!" I am sure there are technical reasons why more than 500 comments is not allowed, but none of them are user-centric.
- peapicker 14y agoI liked Reader because it was a great tool, and wasn't a platform like Facebook... but since Google wants to be a platform now instead of a toolmaker, I'm not surprised they are killing the two tools I use daily: Reader and the iGoogle portal as my custom homepage.
- neves 14y agoExcuse me you all, but the real motive of Google Reader cancellation is that you don't see add when you are reading RSS feeds. That's why Ad Blocker isn't in Google Play anymore.
- cpher 14y agoHere's my simple use case: I use GReader to timeshift info, just like my DVR. I'm not sure i can even tell you when my favorite TV shows air live--they just show up on the DVR. Same with RSS and GR. I might go a couple of weeks without reading X blog, etc but it's there when I'm ready.