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I see no difference between Google Reader shutting down and Apple abandoning the Mac Pro. This has nothing to do with free: it has to do with a failed product

I see no difference between Google Reader shutting down and Apple abandoning the Mac Pro. This has nothing to do with free: it has to do with a failed product like any other, plain and simple. People don't see Google Reader as a failed product because they like it and "a lot of people use it". But that "a lot" is in absolute terms, not relative ones. The reality is that not enough people use RSS for it to matter at Google scale. Even if everyone currently using it were to start paying for it tomorrow, it would be a drop in the bucket of Google profits. Reader had it's chance, and it failed to get enough traction, period. The "free" part is just a distraction in this conversation, Reader makes no sense as a product for Google at any (reasonable) price. This story would have gone down exactly the same had Google offered reader at a price that matched the other competitors at the time: they probably still would have won, and still would have ended up shutting it down. This is exactly the same as how having the Mac Pro line would be incredibly lucrative for you or me, but it just doesn't matter for Apple. The margins are through the roof on that thing, and in a lot of ways its quite possibly the perfect product: a 3 year old machine that commands the same price it did 3 years ago. But again, not enough people want it for it to matter at Apple scale. If Apple could double the price and maintain the same sale numbers of the Mac Pro, it still wouldn't be worth it for them. If anything, we should see this as a really healthy market correction. Its good for Google to realize that this isn't worth their time so they can focus their resources on things only they can do (like cars that drive themselves and whatnot) and leave these tasks for the rest of us where these user numbers and profits are meaningful.

youngerdryas 14y ago
You can still buy a Mac Pro. Google could have had Reader live on because they are, you know, "open". Except they want everyone to use Google+.
- tolmasky 14y ago
  What does this have to do with anything? Google is a business like any other. Google is not dropping Reader because they are secretly closed and nefarious, they are dropping it because no one uses it (again, relatively speaking). If people actually used RSS then they'd feel compelled to keep it, whether priced or not, because it would be make business sense to keep it around. I guarantee you that if RSS had Facebook's user count, they'd be banging that RSS drum like crazy. But it doesn't, and Google is not a charity. Whether you believe them to be "open" or not (meaningless statement), being "open" certainly does not commit you to supporting arbitrary protocols indefinitely for the good of the world, especially ones that most people don't use. RSS had its shot, it just can't compete in today's web. And we'll see for just how long you can still buy the Mac Pro.
  - youngerdryas 14y ago
    Look I like Google and I understand they have to run a business but I have a hard time believing that shuttering Reader has nothing to do with driving people to G+.
    - Kylekramer 14y ago
      I am not following the logic you believe Google would use to think shuttering Reader would push people to Google+. How does pissing off people who use Reader push them to use another service by the company that just pissed them off? Especially when Google+ doesn't really do what the Reader did?
      - youngerdryas 14y ago
        http://thenextweb.com/google/2013/03/14/former-google-reader-product-manager-confirms-our-suspicions-its-demise-is-all-about-google/ http://thenextweb.com/google/2013/03/14/former-google-reader...
        Kylekramer 14y ago
        Nothing into that link says anything about shutting down Reader to drive people to Google+. It does have a former employee saying Google+ is more of a focus for Google than Reader, but that isn't remotely the same and everyone knew that for quite a while.
        youngerdryas 14y ago
        From the article: After all, before Google Reader’s sharing features were converted to corresponding Google+ ones, users of the soon-to-be-killed service used to share like crazy. Shih postulates, with plenty of logic, that this activity dropped as Google pushed Reader users to sharing on Google+ instead.
        Kylekramer 14y ago
- Kylekramer 14y ago
  I don't see how "open" = maintaining a service that was never open source.
  - antimatter 14y ago
    I think he means Google could've have open sourced Reader if they wanted to.
    - Kylekramer 14y ago
      I presume the underpinnings of Reader (search, caching, etc.) are so tied to Google tech that open sourcing it would either be impossible or lead to a neutered version that was useless.
  - smacktoward 14y ago
    It's "open" in the sense of it was built on open protocols, rather than proprietary ones. Replacing those open protocols with proprietary ones makes you less open. Google moving from Reader (RSS/Atom) to Current (unspecified protocols) is less open. Google moving Calendar from CalDAV to their proprietary Calendar API is less open. Google potentially moving Talk from XMPP to an unspecified proprietary protocol is less open. Etc.
- ksherlock 14y ago
  The Mac Pro is no longer sold in Europe.
- Smudge 14y ago
  > You can still buy a Mac Pro. Even more importantly, if you already purchased a Mac Pro, you can still use it. Indefinitely, until it breaks beyond repair.
  - cromwellian 14y ago
    Not exactly. Apple stops shipping OSX updates for older Mac Pros, so eventually, you lose software support. I have a Mac Pro that no longer works with Mountain Lion. Is it missing some kind of hardware needed to run Mountain Lion? No. Is there any reason it shouldn't be able to run it? No. As a result, I could not get upgrades for some software that required Mountain Lion to use. That, combined with the lack of upgrades, forced me to replace my Mac Pro with a custom built Linux box. It now sits idle in the corner.
    - Smudge 14y ago
      Okay, so it's not black and white. Sure, my android phone from 3 years ago can't run most newer apps. But it can still run the things I had on the phone at the time. I guess what I was getting at was that Apple (or Google) doesn't come and take the device away from you once the product line has been EOL'd.
YooLi 14y ago
This analogy would only work if Apple gave away the Mac Pro for free, everyone switched to it because it was free, and then Apple announced they needed all the Mac Pros back because they were done providing free Mac Pros. But it's not. If you have a Mac Pro now, you can continue to use it as long as you want. Google Reader disappears in July.
- tolmasky 14y ago
  My analogy was comparing the products themselves, not the surrounding techniques used by the companies that make them. My point is that Reader and Mac Pro are at their core very similar products: immensely useful for a small (nerdy) market niche, not capable of ever providing enough profits to warrant their upkeep in a corporation the size of Apple or Google. Whether you believe Google "won" by offering it for free or not is inconsequential in my mind. My point is simply that there existed no universe in which a responsible Google would continue supporting it, because the product simply doesn't make sense to them in the same way the Mac Pro really just doesn't make sense to Apple.
  - MatthewPhillips 14y ago
    But Marco's point was that Reader dominated its niche in such a way that few alternatives exist. This is obviously not true of the Mac Pro. Google didn't simply kill off an unsuccessful product. They killed off an unsuccessful product that had a near-monopoly.
    - angryasian 14y ago
      > few alternatives exist. this is ridiculous the last few days on HN were filled with alternatives. Google allows you to export your feeds so nothing was lost.
    - tolmasky 14y ago
      Yes, and my point is twofold: 1. It dominated its niche because it was a legitimately good product, not just because it was free. There have been many free alternatives for a long time, even before Reader. For example if every Mac user actually used the built in RSS readers that ship with OS X they would have eclipsed the Reader userbase. 2. The fact that it is a small niche (and more importantly isn't really growing) probably better explains the "lack" of alternatives. The fact of the matter is that when Apple finally kills off the Mac Pro there actually won't be (lega) alternatives, unlike the current situation with RSS where there are plenty of alternatives (its just that Google's was way better). This is my whole point: Google won on quality, decided it wasn't worth it for them, and then exited. Had they priced it from the beginning (either through ads or freemium or whatever), they would have still won in my opinion, and then still killed it. Reader winning and going away has nothing to do with free in my mind: there is just no universe where Google would continue supporting an RSS product because RSS is not a big enough market. I guess my point is that Google would have "killed the space" no matter what, not because they made it free.
jdechko 14y ago
I think that analogy is a bit of a stretch. The Mac Pro is a product that you purchase. Google Reader was a free service that was dependent on someone else. If Apple decides to kill the Mac Pro line, the Mac Pros that have been sold don't suddenly cease to function. But on July 1, Reader will no longer work neither on the website nor on any of the apps using the API.
wmf 14y ago
I think you can compare the Mac Pro to Sparrow (which Marco mentioned in a footnote). It's not even enough for a product to be profitable. If a product's development team can be redeployed to some even more profitable (or "strategic") use, you may be saying goodbye to a perfectly good product.
j_s 14y ago
The interesting thing to me is that Google is throwing away a human-powered recommendation engine; Google Reader was people putting together their own equivalent of something like dmoz.org, volunteering analytics on prioritization. Perhaps the organizing being done was too tech-focused to be of enough value in any other category, or Google is confident enough in algorithms to drop the parallel system. Or, as was stated, their wasn't enough participation at all.
brockhand 14y ago
I guess a big thing that I have to wonder here is how many folks stopped using Reader (or became less engaged) after they swapped many of the built in sharing features out for G+ integration... Many of the people in my social circle that were big Google Reader users stopped using it because it was much more difficult to share articles that we'd browse while at work.
md224 14y ago
I think much of the confused back-and-forth in this thread seems to stem from the fact that "good business decision" and "bad outcome for users" are not mutually exclusive. I don't think Marco doubts that Google had valid reasons for shuttering Reader. His piece is simply a plea to avoid becoming dependent on "proprietary monocultures" so that when these shutdowns occur, the negative impact on the user-base is minimized. (Though I'm not sure that he's entirely against regulation, as some in this thread have suggested.)

youngerdryas 14y ago

You can still buy a Mac Pro. Google could have had Reader live on because they are, you know, "open". Except they want everyone to use Google+.

tolmasky 14y ago
What does this have to do with anything? Google is a business like any other. Google is not dropping Reader because they are secretly closed and nefarious, they are dropping it because no one uses it (again, relatively speaking). If people actually used RSS then they'd feel compelled to keep it, whether priced or not, because it would be make business sense to keep it around. I guarantee you that if RSS had Facebook's user count, they'd be banging that RSS drum like crazy. But it doesn't, and Google is not a charity. Whether you believe them to be "open" or not (meaningless statement), being "open" certainly does not commit you to supporting arbitrary protocols indefinitely for the good of the world, especially ones that most people don't use. RSS had its shot, it just can't compete in today's web. And we'll see for just how long you can still buy the Mac Pro.
- youngerdryas 14y ago
  Look I like Google and I understand they have to run a business but I have a hard time believing that shuttering Reader has nothing to do with driving people to G+.
  - Kylekramer 14y ago
    I am not following the logic you believe Google would use to think shuttering Reader would push people to Google+. How does pissing off people who use Reader push them to use another service by the company that just pissed them off? Especially when Google+ doesn't really do what the Reader did?
    - youngerdryas 14y ago
      http://thenextweb.com/google/2013/03/14/former-google-reader-product-manager-confirms-our-suspicions-its-demise-is-all-about-google/ http://thenextweb.com/google/2013/03/14/former-google-reader...
      - Kylekramer 14y ago
        Nothing into that link says anything about shutting down Reader to drive people to Google+. It does have a former employee saying Google+ is more of a focus for Google than Reader, but that isn't remotely the same and everyone knew that for quite a while.
        youngerdryas 14y ago
        From the article: After all, before Google Reader’s sharing features were converted to corresponding Google+ ones, users of the soon-to-be-killed service used to share like crazy. Shih postulates, with plenty of logic, that this activity dropped as Google pushed Reader users to sharing on Google+ instead.
        Kylekramer 14y ago
Kylekramer 14y ago
I don't see how "open" = maintaining a service that was never open source.
- antimatter 14y ago
  I think he means Google could've have open sourced Reader if they wanted to.
  - Kylekramer 14y ago
    I presume the underpinnings of Reader (search, caching, etc.) are so tied to Google tech that open sourcing it would either be impossible or lead to a neutered version that was useless.
- smacktoward 14y ago
  It's "open" in the sense of it was built on open protocols, rather than proprietary ones. Replacing those open protocols with proprietary ones makes you less open. Google moving from Reader (RSS/Atom) to Current (unspecified protocols) is less open. Google moving Calendar from CalDAV to their proprietary Calendar API is less open. Google potentially moving Talk from XMPP to an unspecified proprietary protocol is less open. Etc.
ksherlock 14y ago
The Mac Pro is no longer sold in Europe.
Smudge 14y ago
> You can still buy a Mac Pro. Even more importantly, if you already purchased a Mac Pro, you can still use it. Indefinitely, until it breaks beyond repair.
- cromwellian 14y ago
  Not exactly. Apple stops shipping OSX updates for older Mac Pros, so eventually, you lose software support. I have a Mac Pro that no longer works with Mountain Lion. Is it missing some kind of hardware needed to run Mountain Lion? No. Is there any reason it shouldn't be able to run it? No. As a result, I could not get upgrades for some software that required Mountain Lion to use. That, combined with the lack of upgrades, forced me to replace my Mac Pro with a custom built Linux box. It now sits idle in the corner.
  - Smudge 14y ago
    Okay, so it's not black and white. Sure, my android phone from 3 years ago can't run most newer apps. But it can still run the things I had on the phone at the time. I guess what I was getting at was that Apple (or Google) doesn't come and take the device away from you once the product line has been EOL'd.

YooLi 14y ago

This analogy would only work if Apple gave away the Mac Pro for free, everyone switched to it because it was free, and then Apple announced they needed all the Mac Pros back because they were done providing free Mac Pros. But it's not. If you have a Mac Pro now, you can continue to use it as long as you want. Google Reader disappears in July.

tolmasky 14y ago
My analogy was comparing the products themselves, not the surrounding techniques used by the companies that make them. My point is that Reader and Mac Pro are at their core very similar products: immensely useful for a small (nerdy) market niche, not capable of ever providing enough profits to warrant their upkeep in a corporation the size of Apple or Google. Whether you believe Google "won" by offering it for free or not is inconsequential in my mind. My point is simply that there existed no universe in which a responsible Google would continue supporting it, because the product simply doesn't make sense to them in the same way the Mac Pro really just doesn't make sense to Apple.
- MatthewPhillips 14y ago
  But Marco's point was that Reader dominated its niche in such a way that few alternatives exist. This is obviously not true of the Mac Pro. Google didn't simply kill off an unsuccessful product. They killed off an unsuccessful product that had a near-monopoly.
  - angryasian 14y ago
    > few alternatives exist. this is ridiculous the last few days on HN were filled with alternatives. Google allows you to export your feeds so nothing was lost.
  - tolmasky 14y ago
    Yes, and my point is twofold: 1. It dominated its niche because it was a legitimately good product, not just because it was free. There have been many free alternatives for a long time, even before Reader. For example if every Mac user actually used the built in RSS readers that ship with OS X they would have eclipsed the Reader userbase. 2. The fact that it is a small niche (and more importantly isn't really growing) probably better explains the "lack" of alternatives. The fact of the matter is that when Apple finally kills off the Mac Pro there actually won't be (lega) alternatives, unlike the current situation with RSS where there are plenty of alternatives (its just that Google's was way better). This is my whole point: Google won on quality, decided it wasn't worth it for them, and then exited. Had they priced it from the beginning (either through ads or freemium or whatever), they would have still won in my opinion, and then still killed it. Reader winning and going away has nothing to do with free in my mind: there is just no universe where Google would continue supporting an RSS product because RSS is not a big enough market. I guess my point is that Google would have "killed the space" no matter what, not because they made it free.

jdechko 14y ago

I think that analogy is a bit of a stretch. The Mac Pro is a product that you purchase. Google Reader was a free service that was dependent on someone else. If Apple decides to kill the Mac Pro line, the Mac Pros that have been sold don't suddenly cease to function. But on July 1, Reader will no longer work neither on the website nor on any of the apps using the API.

wmf 14y ago

I think you can compare the Mac Pro to Sparrow (which Marco mentioned in a footnote). It's not even enough for a product to be profitable. If a product's development team can be redeployed to some even more profitable (or "strategic") use, you may be saying goodbye to a perfectly good product.

j_s 14y ago

The interesting thing to me is that Google is throwing away a human-powered recommendation engine; Google Reader was people putting together their own equivalent of something like dmoz.org, volunteering analytics on prioritization. Perhaps the organizing being done was too tech-focused to be of enough value in any other category, or Google is confident enough in algorithms to drop the parallel system. Or, as was stated, their wasn't enough participation at all.

brockhand 14y ago

I guess a big thing that I have to wonder here is how many folks stopped using Reader (or became less engaged) after they swapped many of the built in sharing features out for G+ integration... Many of the people in my social circle that were big Google Reader users stopped using it because it was much more difficult to share articles that we'd browse while at work.

md224 14y ago

I think much of the confused back-and-forth in this thread seems to stem from the fact that "good business decision" and "bad outcome for users" are not mutually exclusive. I don't think Marco doubts that Google had valid reasons for shuttering Reader. His piece is simply a plea to avoid becoming dependent on "proprietary monocultures" so that when these shutdowns occur, the negative impact on the user-base is minimized. (Though I'm not sure that he's entirely against regulation, as some in this thread have suggested.)