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For me, this was a good move. It inspired me to finally look past Google for the web based services I use daily (search, mail, rss, analytics, calendar, video

For me, this was a good move. It inspired me to finally look past Google for the web based services I use daily (search, mail, rss, analytics, calendar, video hosting etc). Google's wants to know as much about me as possible. Putting all of my eggs in their basket seems like horrible idea. I've now come quite far in my exodus. Yesterday I found https://www.startpage.com/ https://www.startpage.com/ (uses Google) which gives good results (roughly same as Swedish Google but not filter bubbled). DDG (uses different sources, but seems to weight Bing) is downright terrible when not using English as search language.

mikelat 13y ago
> Google's wants to know as much about me as possible. Which is the reason they shut it down most probably. They can data mine your documents, emails, social networking etc but something like google reader doesn't help much. They most they'll get out of it is a few rss feeds and can analyze what you like, but hell they already know what you search for so it's useless data.
- crdoconnor 13y ago
  I always just assumed that they were using it to weight web page rankings, and that it probably paid off just for that reason alone. If a website has a lot of genuine RSS subscribers in Google Reader who read it regularly, then that shows a strong degree of trust in the source, and thus a good reason to rank it highly. You can't really mine social networking / emails for the same kind of information. Not unless everybody who used google reader started using G+ the same way (which is not gonna happen).
  - tempestn 13y ago
    Wow, that's a good point though. Does anyone know whether Google uses links in private emails to refine search rankings? With gmail being the most popular free email by far, that might be a small but significant edge on the competition. (Not that Google needs such an edge at the moment, but that doesn't mean they'd pass it up.)
- MarkMc 13y ago
  I have the opposite view - when I use Reader the folks at Google know how often I click on certain topics, and how long I spend reading each topic. My gut tells me that such information would be quite useful to their search product, even if they have already know my search history. And for some users Google will not know their search history and social information. A similar logic applies to Google Checkout (aka Google Wallet). I would have thought that knowing my purchase history would be very useful to the search algorithm. So I really don't understand Google's approach. Their search algorithm is their prime asset, but they seem willing to degrade it bit by bit.
  - pavel_lishin 13y ago
    I think that the number of people who use Google Reader is tiny in comparison to the number of people who use gmail, which itself is probably fairly small compared to the number of people who use the search engine.
psbp 13y ago
How is startpage a solution to the problem? If everyone stopped using google, startpage would be useless.
- unicornporn 13y ago
  It is no solution to the problem, but perhaps a band aid for some of the symptoms. If everyone stopped using Google, Startpage would need to get their own crawler. I welcome a day where (in practice) a search engine doesn't have monopoly on search. For me it is a first step. Google wont have an easy time connecting my searches to my any of my Google Profiles (where their every source of data is combined). I've been using raw Google since I left Altavista (RIP), which was quite a while ago. I'm looking forward to look into http://www.seeks-project.info/ http://www.seeks-project.info/
Semaphor 13y ago
> For me, this was a good move. > It inspired me to finally look past Google for the web based services I use daily (search, mail, rss, analytics, calendar, video hosting etc). At the beginning I was as pissed as everyone else. Now? I love Newsblur more than I did Google Reader; I'm looking forward to checking out the new reader alternatives popping up and Fastmail is so much faster than GMail. I still use some Google services but only when I find them to be by far the best solution.

mikelat 13y ago

> Google's wants to know as much about me as possible. Which is the reason they shut it down most probably. They can data mine your documents, emails, social networking etc but something like google reader doesn't help much. They most they'll get out of it is a few rss feeds and can analyze what you like, but hell they already know what you search for so it's useless data.

crdoconnor 13y ago
I always just assumed that they were using it to weight web page rankings, and that it probably paid off just for that reason alone. If a website has a lot of genuine RSS subscribers in Google Reader who read it regularly, then that shows a strong degree of trust in the source, and thus a good reason to rank it highly. You can't really mine social networking / emails for the same kind of information. Not unless everybody who used google reader started using G+ the same way (which is not gonna happen).
- tempestn 13y ago
  Wow, that's a good point though. Does anyone know whether Google uses links in private emails to refine search rankings? With gmail being the most popular free email by far, that might be a small but significant edge on the competition. (Not that Google needs such an edge at the moment, but that doesn't mean they'd pass it up.)
MarkMc 13y ago
I have the opposite view - when I use Reader the folks at Google know how often I click on certain topics, and how long I spend reading each topic. My gut tells me that such information would be quite useful to their search product, even if they have already know my search history. And for some users Google will not know their search history and social information. A similar logic applies to Google Checkout (aka Google Wallet). I would have thought that knowing my purchase history would be very useful to the search algorithm. So I really don't understand Google's approach. Their search algorithm is their prime asset, but they seem willing to degrade it bit by bit.
- pavel_lishin 13y ago
  I think that the number of people who use Google Reader is tiny in comparison to the number of people who use gmail, which itself is probably fairly small compared to the number of people who use the search engine.

psbp 13y ago

How is startpage a solution to the problem? If everyone stopped using google, startpage would be useless.

unicornporn 13y ago
It is no solution to the problem, but perhaps a band aid for some of the symptoms. If everyone stopped using Google, Startpage would need to get their own crawler. I welcome a day where (in practice) a search engine doesn't have monopoly on search. For me it is a first step. Google wont have an easy time connecting my searches to my any of my Google Profiles (where their every source of data is combined). I've been using raw Google since I left Altavista (RIP), which was quite a while ago. I'm looking forward to look into http://www.seeks-project.info/ http://www.seeks-project.info/

Semaphor 13y ago

> For me, this was a good move. > It inspired me to finally look past Google for the web based services I use daily (search, mail, rss, analytics, calendar, video hosting etc). At the beginning I was as pissed as everyone else. Now? I love Newsblur more than I did Google Reader; I'm looking forward to checking out the new reader alternatives popping up and Fastmail is so much faster than GMail. I still use some Google services but only when I find them to be by far the best solution.