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I don't think Google is 'actively working against an open web', but the shuttering of Reader in order to make way for that ghastly Google+ makes me reconsider e

I don't think Google is 'actively working against an open web', but the shuttering of Reader in order to make way for that ghastly Google+ makes me reconsider every time they open up a new service (didn't even glance at Keep, for example. Remember what happened to Google Notebook?) It's nice to have open source alternatives, and possibly to help them grow. If a lot more people start using, say, ownCloud, it will probably help develop it into a more robust and usable platform. Also, as a hacker, having a stack of my own software side-by-side with my current Google/Apple stack will probably help me learn more as I use it more, and will give me something to fall back on in case Google shutters it.

cromwellian 14y ago
"the shuttering of Reader in order to make way for that ghastly Google+" There's a lot of erroneous assumptions in there. Reader was never really a product with much support, it was more a labor of love of a small dedicated team. Reader was not shutdown to "make way for G+" anymore than any of the other spring cleaned services were shut down because of competing services. Even the original (ex-Googler now) Reader engineers have pretty much outlined many of the reasons, including the decline of RSS, which was killed off in large part by people moving to services like Twitter, Facebook, and Tumblr. It's really regretable, but it's time to realize that the rest of the world moved on, and if we want federated, open services, it's going to have to built from the ground up, and in a way that users, not hackers, will want to use it.