5 ms·

I think he is vastly underestimating the amount of work required to make a true Google Reader replacement. Reader was a lot more than just an RSS reader, and m

I think he is vastly underestimating the amount of work required to make a true Google Reader replacement. Reader was a lot more than just an RSS reader, and much more than just the front-end bits. Reading this post makes me wonder if he ever even used it or had much direct interaction with the underlying feed API and all that it offers (historical feed data, etc). Re-read this blog post with every mention of "Google Reader" replaced with "Google Search" to get an idea of how ridiculous a notion it is that we should just shut up and make our own in a couple of months. Granted, the scale isn't quite the same. Google Reader is not as difficult to replace as Google Search would be, but it is far more difficult than he thinks. Having said all of this, it is absolutely Google's call if it wants to keep Reader going or not, they don't owe me anything when it comes to Reader or any of their other services that I don't pay for, but OTOH shutting down Reader does mean I'm going to think twice (or four times) about adopting any future Google service. They've now established quite a pattern of killing off things I've grown to depend on, and they are free to do that, but I'm free to avoid their services for fear of being burned again.

czr80 14y ago
That's an interesting comparison... it actually strikes me that Google Reader is much harder for me to replace than Google search. Switching to Bing would be easy, whereas Reader was something I'd integrated into my life, and which I'd curated for myself.
- akkartik 14y ago
  But the part you curated you can export and take with you.
  - Samuel_Michon 14y ago
    You can't export the content of the feeds (EDIT: using Google Takeout, that is.) Oftentimes, GR is the only one that still has a copy of an older article. What use is it to know I've starred an article if I can't read it anymore? (To remedy this, I've been using Reeder to export all my starred items to both Instapaper and Evernote. But no thanks to Google.)
    - samastur 14y ago
      I'm a day or two away from "finishing" a script that will allow you to do that (well, at least as far as Google will let me) and pushing it to Github. I'm likely not the only person working on this so I expect we'll be able to save most of our data.
    - beering 14y ago
      Closest thing you can do is grab the JSON of the data as the browser downloads it. The cached content that shows up on a feed's pane is transferred in bulk via JSON, so it should make a decent archive. Just need a way to do it automatically...
    - notaddicted 14y ago
      It can be done but it isn't pretty. My first resort when someone deletes their blog or whatever thing that was meaningful to me that I foolishly failed to mirror, is to go to archive.org and see if they have a good mirror. If they don't but they do have enough that you can find out the RSS URL, you can get google reader's archive of the feed like so: http://webapps.stackexchange.com/questions/17484/archive-export-all-the-blog-entries-from-a-rss-feed-in-google-reader http://webapps.stackexchange.com/questions/17484/archive-exp... What you get back is just raw XML. EDIT: for example, here are the last 100 posts from Mark Pilgrim's blog: http://www.google.com/reader/atom/feed/http://diveintomark.org/feed/?n=100 http://www.google.com/reader/atom/feed/http://diveintomark.o... ... in this particular case archive.org has a good copy though so this isn't necessary as a last resort.
      - Samuel_Michon 14y ago
        Here's a way to download the archive of all your starred items, 1000 at a time, straight to XML: https://productforums.google.com/forum/#!msg/reader/fMLNWm-sHDg/iaEVjOWdcaUJ https://productforums.google.com/forum/#!msg/reader/fMLNWm-s...
    - motdiem 14y ago
      I pushed a small python script to allow you to export your read items as JSON here https://github.com/motdiem/GRARchiver https://github.com/motdiem/GRARchiver - this can help
emin_gun_sirer 14y ago
I was indeed a Reader user, but by no means a power-user, so I could very well be unaware of some difficult-to-duplicate parts of Reader that are hidden under the covers. Can you let me know what I could be missing?
- TillE 14y ago
  > historical feed data Google caches the entire history of an RSS feed from the moment it entered their database. This is in many cases unique, irreplaceable data that's going to have to be systematically extracted over the next few months, because I seriously doubt Google will release the entire data dump.
  - emin_gun_sirer 14y ago
    Thanks, I appreciate this. In your estimate, what percentage of Reader users have, or will, donate to the Internet Archive to perform this archival task? At what percentage level would it be wrong to call Reader users "entitled", given that the IA folks were hurting for disk space while these complainers chose to ignore its pleas?
    - samastur 14y ago
      At what point will you stop behaving like an asshole? Not everyone who complains knows about IA or should necessarily care about it. We are not all the same person with same needs and things we miss from reader may not be the same, but that doesn't mean that it isn't a true loss/problem for each that is not easy to replace (I tried and none of the alternatives come close which is why I WILL write my own).
      - emin_gun_sirer 14y ago
        That kind of language will bring the discussion to an end.
- samastur 14y ago
  Well, reliable parsing of feeds in itself is difficult and never really solved, but other than that none of the features was difficult to duplicate. They rarely are. But that doesn't mean there weren't lots of them and that building reader is not a huge project. Sure I could build my own (in fact, I plan to), but this is obviously completely non-realistic attitude to take for every service that can or does bugger you. Much easier than building these new alternatives is for you to just not read the articles which bother you. Especially since in this case you mostly can know from the title if they will.
deleted 14y ago
[deleted]

czr80 14y ago

That's an interesting comparison... it actually strikes me that Google Reader is much harder for me to replace than Google search. Switching to Bing would be easy, whereas Reader was something I'd integrated into my life, and which I'd curated for myself.

akkartik 14y ago
But the part you curated you can export and take with you.
- Samuel_Michon 14y ago
  You can't export the content of the feeds (EDIT: using Google Takeout, that is.) Oftentimes, GR is the only one that still has a copy of an older article. What use is it to know I've starred an article if I can't read it anymore? (To remedy this, I've been using Reeder to export all my starred items to both Instapaper and Evernote. But no thanks to Google.)
  - samastur 14y ago
    I'm a day or two away from "finishing" a script that will allow you to do that (well, at least as far as Google will let me) and pushing it to Github. I'm likely not the only person working on this so I expect we'll be able to save most of our data.
  - beering 14y ago
    Closest thing you can do is grab the JSON of the data as the browser downloads it. The cached content that shows up on a feed's pane is transferred in bulk via JSON, so it should make a decent archive. Just need a way to do it automatically...
  - notaddicted 14y ago
    It can be done but it isn't pretty. My first resort when someone deletes their blog or whatever thing that was meaningful to me that I foolishly failed to mirror, is to go to archive.org and see if they have a good mirror. If they don't but they do have enough that you can find out the RSS URL, you can get google reader's archive of the feed like so: http://webapps.stackexchange.com/questions/17484/archive-export-all-the-blog-entries-from-a-rss-feed-in-google-reader http://webapps.stackexchange.com/questions/17484/archive-exp... What you get back is just raw XML. EDIT: for example, here are the last 100 posts from Mark Pilgrim's blog: http://www.google.com/reader/atom/feed/http://diveintomark.org/feed/?n=100 http://www.google.com/reader/atom/feed/http://diveintomark.o... ... in this particular case archive.org has a good copy though so this isn't necessary as a last resort.
    - Samuel_Michon 14y ago
      Here's a way to download the archive of all your starred items, 1000 at a time, straight to XML: https://productforums.google.com/forum/#!msg/reader/fMLNWm-sHDg/iaEVjOWdcaUJ https://productforums.google.com/forum/#!msg/reader/fMLNWm-s...
  - motdiem 14y ago
    I pushed a small python script to allow you to export your read items as JSON here https://github.com/motdiem/GRARchiver https://github.com/motdiem/GRARchiver - this can help

emin_gun_sirer 14y ago

I was indeed a Reader user, but by no means a power-user, so I could very well be unaware of some difficult-to-duplicate parts of Reader that are hidden under the covers. Can you let me know what I could be missing?

TillE 14y ago
> historical feed data Google caches the entire history of an RSS feed from the moment it entered their database. This is in many cases unique, irreplaceable data that's going to have to be systematically extracted over the next few months, because I seriously doubt Google will release the entire data dump.
- emin_gun_sirer 14y ago
  Thanks, I appreciate this. In your estimate, what percentage of Reader users have, or will, donate to the Internet Archive to perform this archival task? At what percentage level would it be wrong to call Reader users "entitled", given that the IA folks were hurting for disk space while these complainers chose to ignore its pleas?
  - samastur 14y ago
    At what point will you stop behaving like an asshole? Not everyone who complains knows about IA or should necessarily care about it. We are not all the same person with same needs and things we miss from reader may not be the same, but that doesn't mean that it isn't a true loss/problem for each that is not easy to replace (I tried and none of the alternatives come close which is why I WILL write my own).
    - emin_gun_sirer 14y ago
      That kind of language will bring the discussion to an end.
samastur 14y ago
Well, reliable parsing of feeds in itself is difficult and never really solved, but other than that none of the features was difficult to duplicate. They rarely are. But that doesn't mean there weren't lots of them and that building reader is not a huge project. Sure I could build my own (in fact, I plan to), but this is obviously completely non-realistic attitude to take for every service that can or does bugger you. Much easier than building these new alternatives is for you to just not read the articles which bother you. Especially since in this case you mostly can know from the title if they will.

deleted 14y ago

[deleted]