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Right up till the 11th hour I held out hope that Google would give Reader a last minute stay of execution. A sad day indeed.

by steve19 13y ago

egeozcan 13y ago
Exactly my feelings. I actually kept the tab open to see if their API kept working but the feeds stopped loading and I hit F5. Oh, the horror...
- dredmorbius 13y ago
  I've got a tab still open and it's been updating as of 16 minutes ago (now being Tue Jul 2 15:27:02 UTC 2013), though the same URL in a new tab brings up the tombstone.
WildUtah 13y ago
And they actually, truly pulled the plug, with almost no warning. Now I have no idea what I'll do.
- tdicola 13y ago
  As annoyed as I am with Reader's demise, you can't really say they gave no warning. Four months heads up, and for the last few weeks daily reminders when you logged in should have gotten the message across.
- Svip 13y ago
  Go to the websites manually?
- simonw 13y ago
  Apparently you can export your subscriptions using Google Takeout until the 15th of July.
- ersii 13y ago
  I've gotten a warning/notice almost every day the last months, that Google Reader is about to shut down. That's not "with almost no warning". You can still export your feeds from Google Takeout until the 15th of July.
davidjohnstone 13y ago
As much as my life would have been easier this year without the decision to close Google Reader (I think this is what they call #firstworldproblems), it's a good thing that they didn't change their mind and decide to not shut it down at the last minute. Too many people have invested too much time in creating viable alternatives to Google Reader, and un-discontinuing it would have thrown a massive spanner in the works. I probably would have stayed with an alternative out of spite.
- Tyrannosaurs 13y ago
  I was thinking about this last night and even had Google kept it going I'd have stayed with Feedbin. Kill it once and there's always the possibility they'll try and do it again. Feedbin is a small outfit with a fraction of the resources that Google has but they care about RSS reading, something Google clearly don't whatever they say or do now. I'll happily pay a couple of bucks a month to support someone with a commitment to a product I'm interested in.
- chii 13y ago
  you've raised an interesting method to disrupt new-comers - by faking an end-of-life announcement, then "listen to the community" and reinstate a product, you could effectively make the market harder to enter!
- droidist2 13y ago
  Couldn't 99% of all complaints/concerns (especially on the internet) be classified as first world problems?
  - pavel_lishin 13y ago
    If you live in the first world, sure.
    - droidist2 13y ago
      If it applies to almost anything, what's the purpose behind it? Is it just kind of a lighthearted way to remind oneself to feel grateful and that daily problems aren't so big in the scheme of things? #AtLeastIHaveShelterAndPlentyToEat doesn't have the same ring to it. Or maybe now it's mostly used preemptively against ridicule? When complaining about something, if you add #firstworldproblems it makes it impossible to accuse you of whining.
tempestn 13y ago
What they should have done is announced that they were killing it, then when the entirely predictable public outcry hit, 'listen to the community', and make it a paid service instead. From the numbers Feedly and Newsblur and such are picking up, it doesn't seem like a stretch that a paid version of Google Reader could have brought in at least $10M/year, even given the resulting loss of users. The only difficulty would be converting from free to paid without massive backlash. The bait and switch would accomplish that. Hire a few full-time engineers to maintain it, and you've still got many millions of dollars in annual revenue for something that already exists. Surely even a company Google's size would be better off not throwing that away in the interest of 'focus'. But hey, Larry is clearly smarter than I am, so presumably he knows what he's doing. Heck, maybe he even realized that Reader had become an impediment to progress and removing it would be a net good (pun intended). The progress that's been made in just the past few months is certainly exciting.
- piqufoh 13y ago
  > make it a paid service instead Taking a pure business centric view - We're not google's customers, advertisers are. If we paid for the service we would expect no advertising - and so google's customers would lose.
  - tempestn 13y ago
    If Google was already making that kind of money purely from ads Reader, then the rest of my reasoning stands. Just hire a handful of engineers to maintain it full time and enjoy raking in millions of dollars a year for many years. The fact that they shut it down suggests that it wasn't making millions of dollars from ads, so why not remove them and charge for it instead? As I said, the only real barrier would appear to be the reaction, which could be solved with a bit of manipulation, in fact spinning it into a PR positive. I suspect the answer is that a few millions dollars a year is considered pocket change by Google, insufficient to waste time on. To me that reasoning seems shortsighted. Again though, it's likely that Larry Page's sight is in fact much longer than mine.
  - Shooti 13y ago

Right up till the 11th hour I held out hope that Google would give Reader a last minute stay of execution. A sad day indeed.

by steve19 13y ago

Right up till the 11th hour I held out hope that Google would give Reader a last minute stay of execution. A sad day indeed.

egeozcan 13y ago

Exactly my feelings. I actually kept the tab open to see if their API kept working but the feeds stopped loading and I hit F5. Oh, the horror...

dredmorbius 13y ago
I've got a tab still open and it's been updating as of 16 minutes ago (now being Tue Jul 2 15:27:02 UTC 2013), though the same URL in a new tab brings up the tombstone.

WildUtah 13y ago

And they actually, truly pulled the plug, with almost no warning. Now I have no idea what I'll do.

tdicola 13y ago
As annoyed as I am with Reader's demise, you can't really say they gave no warning. Four months heads up, and for the last few weeks daily reminders when you logged in should have gotten the message across.
Svip 13y ago
Go to the websites manually?
simonw 13y ago
Apparently you can export your subscriptions using Google Takeout until the 15th of July.
ersii 13y ago
I've gotten a warning/notice almost every day the last months, that Google Reader is about to shut down. That's not "with almost no warning". You can still export your feeds from Google Takeout until the 15th of July.

davidjohnstone 13y ago

As much as my life would have been easier this year without the decision to close Google Reader (I think this is what they call #firstworldproblems), it's a good thing that they didn't change their mind and decide to not shut it down at the last minute. Too many people have invested too much time in creating viable alternatives to Google Reader, and un-discontinuing it would have thrown a massive spanner in the works. I probably would have stayed with an alternative out of spite.

Tyrannosaurs 13y ago
I was thinking about this last night and even had Google kept it going I'd have stayed with Feedbin. Kill it once and there's always the possibility they'll try and do it again. Feedbin is a small outfit with a fraction of the resources that Google has but they care about RSS reading, something Google clearly don't whatever they say or do now. I'll happily pay a couple of bucks a month to support someone with a commitment to a product I'm interested in.
chii 13y ago
you've raised an interesting method to disrupt new-comers - by faking an end-of-life announcement, then "listen to the community" and reinstate a product, you could effectively make the market harder to enter!
droidist2 13y ago
Couldn't 99% of all complaints/concerns (especially on the internet) be classified as first world problems?
- pavel_lishin 13y ago
  If you live in the first world, sure.
  - droidist2 13y ago
    If it applies to almost anything, what's the purpose behind it? Is it just kind of a lighthearted way to remind oneself to feel grateful and that daily problems aren't so big in the scheme of things? #AtLeastIHaveShelterAndPlentyToEat doesn't have the same ring to it. Or maybe now it's mostly used preemptively against ridicule? When complaining about something, if you add #firstworldproblems it makes it impossible to accuse you of whining.

tempestn 13y ago

What they should have done is announced that they were killing it, then when the entirely predictable public outcry hit, 'listen to the community', and make it a paid service instead. From the numbers Feedly and Newsblur and such are picking up, it doesn't seem like a stretch that a paid version of Google Reader could have brought in at least $10M/year, even given the resulting loss of users. The only difficulty would be converting from free to paid without massive backlash. The bait and switch would accomplish that. Hire a few full-time engineers to maintain it, and you've still got many millions of dollars in annual revenue for something that already exists. Surely even a company Google's size would be better off not throwing that away in the interest of 'focus'. But hey, Larry is clearly smarter than I am, so presumably he knows what he's doing. Heck, maybe he even realized that Reader had become an impediment to progress and removing it would be a net good (pun intended). The progress that's been made in just the past few months is certainly exciting.

piqufoh 13y ago
> make it a paid service instead Taking a pure business centric view - We're not google's customers, advertisers are. If we paid for the service we would expect no advertising - and so google's customers would lose.
- tempestn 13y ago
  If Google was already making that kind of money purely from ads Reader, then the rest of my reasoning stands. Just hire a handful of engineers to maintain it full time and enjoy raking in millions of dollars a year for many years. The fact that they shut it down suggests that it wasn't making millions of dollars from ads, so why not remove them and charge for it instead? As I said, the only real barrier would appear to be the reaction, which could be solved with a bit of manipulation, in fact spinning it into a PR positive. I suspect the answer is that a few millions dollars a year is considered pocket change by Google, insufficient to waste time on. To me that reasoning seems shortsighted. Again though, it's likely that Larry Page's sight is in fact much longer than mine.
- Shooti 13y ago