3 ms·

The way posters here complained about Google shuttering their free offering I'd think people would shun switching to another free product, but nope! Bunch of w

by parfe 14y ago

The way posters here complained about Google shuttering their free offering I'd think people would shun switching to another free product, but nope! Bunch of whining free riders. Now I understand why Google dumped you.

smackfu 14y ago
Is there any actual evidence that paid services are more reliable than free ones? Seems like a non-viable paid service is just as bad as a non-viable free one. I guess paid services feel worse about shutting down... unless they get acquired.
smsm42 14y ago
You imply paid product somehow would be immune to being shut down. Which sounds about right - there's no precedent that product which charges subscription fees was ever discontinued. Or is there?
deleted 14y ago
[deleted]
tommi 14y ago
Hold on, who's the whining party here? ;) If you take out the whining people out of the three million, you still have a pretty good user base. A user base which just might be willing to pay if there's a good service. Heck, I'd pay if there was something significantly better than the free Feedly.
taligent 14y ago
Which paid solutions exist ? And there is a distinction here. Feedly exists because of feeds and hence are in the same camp as Dropbox, Evernote, LogMeIn and other companies that exist solely for one purpose. But the lesson from the Reader saga was clear. Google is an advertising company and if there isn't a clear way for them to advertise then the product has a high risk of being cancelled.
jerf 14y ago
I trialed several things. I went into Feedly with the expectation it wasn't free. I was actually surprised when it never charged me, and I find myself hoping they will, as I'm not really interested in following another service like this into the inevitable sludgy morass of ads that all free services like this degenerate into. So far it's the winner for me, since I've ended up moving a lot of my RSS consumption to my phone, which has made the final contenders a rather short list.
criley 14y ago
>Bunch of whining free riders. Now I understand why Google dumped you You... you don't understand even the very basics of Google's business model, do you? Spoiler: 99% of their revenue is not derived from direct user transactions to them.
icebraining 14y ago
Free is a red herring, plenty of paid services lasted less than Google Reader. The key is making sure all the layers in your stack are either commodities or can be self-hosted. For example, proprietary SaaS/PaaS services - bad. Generic and interchangeable Linux systems - good. You can build on top of the latter knowing that you can switch if the service is killed. Then, for non-standard components (e.g., the application), you must either host it yourself or make sure you have everything you need (code and data). If you don't have the skills, you can pay someone else to set it up, as long as you don't become hostage to them. It's not unlike cars - if you want something reliable and durable, you're better off choosing the less comfortable model for which parts are easily sourced.

by parfe 14y ago

smackfu 14y ago

Is there any actual evidence that paid services are more reliable than free ones? Seems like a non-viable paid service is just as bad as a non-viable free one. I guess paid services feel worse about shutting down... unless they get acquired.

smsm42 14y ago

You imply paid product somehow would be immune to being shut down. Which sounds about right - there's no precedent that product which charges subscription fees was ever discontinued. Or is there?

deleted 14y ago

[deleted]

tommi 14y ago

Hold on, who's the whining party here? ;) If you take out the whining people out of the three million, you still have a pretty good user base. A user base which just might be willing to pay if there's a good service. Heck, I'd pay if there was something significantly better than the free Feedly.

taligent 14y ago

Which paid solutions exist ? And there is a distinction here. Feedly exists because of feeds and hence are in the same camp as Dropbox, Evernote, LogMeIn and other companies that exist solely for one purpose. But the lesson from the Reader saga was clear. Google is an advertising company and if there isn't a clear way for them to advertise then the product has a high risk of being cancelled.

jerf 14y ago

I trialed several things. I went into Feedly with the expectation it wasn't free. I was actually surprised when it never charged me, and I find myself hoping they will, as I'm not really interested in following another service like this into the inevitable sludgy morass of ads that all free services like this degenerate into. So far it's the winner for me, since I've ended up moving a lot of my RSS consumption to my phone, which has made the final contenders a rather short list.

criley 14y ago

>Bunch of whining free riders. Now I understand why Google dumped you You... you don't understand even the very basics of Google's business model, do you? Spoiler: 99% of their revenue is not derived from direct user transactions to them.

icebraining 14y ago

Free is a red herring, plenty of paid services lasted less than Google Reader. The key is making sure all the layers in your stack are either commodities or can be self-hosted. For example, proprietary SaaS/PaaS services - bad. Generic and interchangeable Linux systems - good. You can build on top of the latter knowing that you can switch if the service is killed. Then, for non-standard components (e.g., the application), you must either host it yourself or make sure you have everything you need (code and data). If you don't have the skills, you can pay someone else to set it up, as long as you don't become hostage to them. It's not unlike cars - if you want something reliable and durable, you're better off choosing the less comfortable model for which parts are easily sourced.