11 ms·

Google Reader Founder: I Never Would Have Founded Reader Inside Today's Google

234 points by lingben 13y ago

sjs1234 13y ago
Love avacado. A coworker pointed it out just before valentines day, and now it's the default way my wife and I text each other.
- massless 13y ago
  I'm glad you like it! It's been fun to build.
lessnonymous 13y ago
I think Google would be wise to offer a discontinued product to the creator. If they have no interest in Reader any more, then Wetherell should be offered the product. Possibly he would need to pay something for it (preferably over a long term) or he would be given the source, but absolutely no users / user data. That way they get innovators to dream big ideas like AdSense, but if those ideas are rejected or later shuttered, the innovator gets to keep his idea.
- mierle 13y ago
  Unfortunately most Google software is practically inseparable from Google's infrastructure. Open sourcing stuff is hard, mostly thankless work.
  - Mindless2112 13y ago
    Neat things do come of it though. Code Search, for example, ended up as an technical explanation [1], which I found fascinating, and example implementation [2], which I found useful. [1] http://swtch.com/~rsc/regexp/regexp4.html http://swtch.com/~rsc/regexp/regexp4.html [2] http://code.google.com/p/codesearch/ http://code.google.com/p/codesearch/
    - mdwrigh2 13y ago
      That's not actually the codebase for code search though -- it's a re-implementation of it done in the original authors new language.
      - Mindless2112 13y ago
        That's my point though: just because a retired product is heavily tied to Google's infrastructure doesn't mean that they couldn't release something useful out of it.
    - danso 13y ago
      This is a great read, thank you for posting it!
arkitaip 13y ago
Does 20% time even exist in today's Google?
- Afforess 13y ago
  No. It is not advertised as a benefit anymore: https://www.google.com/about/jobs/lifeatgoogle/benefits/ https://www.google.com/about/jobs/lifeatgoogle/benefits/ http://www.businessinsider.com/google-engineer-20-time-is-dead-2012-3 http://www.businessinsider.com/google-engineer-20-time-is-de...
  - teebs 13y ago
    I don't work there, but I think it is still around. When I was considering whether to accept an offer there, everyone I asked said they had 20% time, although people used it different ways, and some people just did normal work in their 20% time. Can a Googler confirm?
    - sjbach 13y ago
      Yes, there are 20% projects.
    - proexploit 13y ago
      Like dsymonds mentioned in reply to the parent comment, 20% time is still alive and well.
- dsymonds 13y ago
  Yes, it still exists.
- shazow 13y ago
  It definitely existed when I was there a few months ago. Many people use the opportunity to explore possibilities of working with new teams in the future.
- thrownaway2424 13y ago
  Yes. It's called "Saturday".
nemothekid 13y ago
At the same time, I'm pretty sure an RSS Reader founded today inside Google would go the way of Wave. If Reader was ultimately unmonetizable, I'll cry when its gone, but I don't think anyone should feel entitled to a free service. I'm not a Google employee, but I think Reader is poor measure for how "open" Google is right now. I mean, christ, with Project Loon, I don't think they are any worse, however they have a limited amount of engineers and maintaining an RSS application in 2013 doesn't seem like a huge priority.
- epistasis 13y ago
  >If Reader was ultimately unmonetizable, I'll cry when its gone, but I don't think anyone should feel entitled to a free service. I don't think that it was not monetizable, any less than GMail is. Perhaps there were high, hidden costs in maintaining such a large feed database that would mean that a comparable revenue stream from Reader would not pay for itself nearly as much as GMail does. I think that in the end it's just that Google did not care about the Reader users. They didn't need them, there wasn't enough of a stink when they said they were going to get rid of Reader, either internally or externally.
  - bryanbuckley 13y ago
    >I think that in the end it's just that Google did not care about the Reader users. What % of Google employees do you think are also Reader users? edit: I assume it is something like 90%. Which is why I'm pretty impressed that this change went through.
    - tempestn 13y ago
      I highly doubt it's even close to 90%. If it were, I think you're right that it's much less likely it would have been shut down. There are many very technical people out there that just don't find RSS fits with their workflow. Personally, I have a list of blogs I like to read in a couple bookmarks folders, and when I feel like reading them, I'll go to the bookmarks and see what's up. I don't really care if I miss posts, so I have no real need for a system that will catalog them all for me. I have tried a couple times to get into it, but just found it wasn't for me. (As a means of consuming media. I do use RSS for automating various processes, as well as the occasional RSS-to-email when I really need notifications for something (like rare classifieds posts I'm searching for).) Anyway, my point is, I'm pretty technical - I run a web based company and embrace plenty of modern technologies - and I never got into RSS. I'm fairly certain the majority of Google employees don't make regular use of an RSS reader either. (Although I imagine a significant minority do as well.)
mehrdada 13y ago
"Google Reader founder Chris Wetherell said that if the idea came to him in today’s Google, he would leave the company and build it on his own rather than put it at the mercy of Google leadership." Guess what dude?! If I were in that position and I were primarily worried about my project "being at the mercy of Google" (or any company that I don't have sufficient control over, for that matter), I would have left _anytime_. It should not be something you realize _today_. This is just whining over a "wrong" (presumably; assuming you would have pulled it off well) tradeoff you, yourself, made back in the day. It's not "today's Google vs. back then's Google". This is the tradeoff that you make anytime you decide to work for someone else; this is obvious and was obvious back in the day. If you had not seen it, the blame is wholly on you. Google Reader would not have been a guaranteed success that it was without Google's resources. If one does not have the balls to take the risk of working at his or her own startup, he or she is not entitled to the benefits either. In hindsight, it's too easy to say "I would have gone and pulled it off independently". I personally think Larry overall has been focusing on what matters and under his awesome leadership, Google is performing far better than Eric's time and this whole situation is not dissimilar to what happened at WWDC1997 and Steve's response to the random questioner in the audience: "...the hardest thing is how does that fit in to a cohesive larger vision that's gonna allow you to sell 8 billion dollars... 10 billion dollars... a product a year." http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FF-tKLISfPE http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FF-tKLISfPE
- epistasis 13y ago
  > This is just whining over a "wrong" (presumably; assuming you would have pulled it off well) tradeoff you, yourself, made back in the day. It's not "today's Google vs. back then's Google". I don't see any whining about a wrong, I see somebody saying that Google is different today from when it was back when he first made Reader. I don't see him regretting making Reader, just saying that today, because of cultural changes at Google, he'd do it outside of Google rather than inside of Google. This is not somebody regretting their actions, this is somebody saying that Google's culture is different today then it was back then. Clearly you're a fan of this new culture, and that's just fine, but don't miscontrue his words.
  - 13y ago
cocoflunchy 13y ago
I feel like the only reason we hear so much about Google Reader is because the main users were either journalists or bloggers, which creates an extremely disproportionate noise / (former) user ratio.
- rtpg 13y ago
  that's exactly what happened. The biggest reason this was a bad mood for Google was because the entire tech journalist brain trust was so dependent on it. They spat on the people who can be the most fervent defenders of the company.
  - olalonde 13y ago
    Moral of the story: they should never have built Google Reader in the first place?
    - elorant 13y ago
      The moral of the story is that you should never rely on a service which is given for free.
      - diminish 13y ago
        do you also mean Google Search?
        jffry 13y ago
        If it doesn't cost money, then you're the product
        diminish 13y ago
        paying money doesn't mean you aren't the product.
        13y ago
piyush_soni 13y ago
He probably doesn't realize that it would have never been as successful without Google's data power. So yes, he could have opened his own company and released a Reader, just that no one would come to know about it.
- massless 13y ago
  Small correction: Actually, I've long asserted that Google's infrastructure and talent are key reasons that Reader was successful. I think that neither in the interview, nor the article, did I suggest that – though I could be mistaken.
visarga 13y ago
I don't understand - what is the fuss about Google Reader? I tried using it a few times. I prefer reddit to it. Would someone please explain what is so special about aggregating RSS? Did it have a trainable classifier we could teach to label RSS items or anything else besides simple management of what was read?
- ScottWhigham 13y ago
  Let's take it one level higher: is your question really "what is the fuss about RSS?" or is it your original? If you already understand RSS yet don't 'get' Google Reader, I understand that - I'm right there with you. There were/are far better ways to consume RSS for me and so GR was nothing special. If you don't 'get' RSS, then that's too big of a topic for here. You would want to search more about it. Sorry if this comes across as pedantic - that's not my intent!
  - visarga 13y ago
    I understand RSS and I have written programs that parse RSS feeds. I was just wondering why was Google's aggregation better. It seems it has to do with the management of feeds and read/unread items, but that is just a basic interface. I would have loved to see auto classification, user defined topics and content recommendation. That would have made a much smarter RSS tool.
- lnanek2 13y ago
  Well, personally, I'd had hundreds of sites entered into it and the read tracking was much better than Reddit. On Reddit I have to vote on anything I want to disappear, Google Reader did it auto. Not that I would switch off anything I have entered that much data and state into anyway. It would have taken over a week to catch up on read status on all sites and switch over properly with no read queue on any of them. Users putting data in is the best way to get them to stick around. It's also terrible for your rep when you kill the product like this.
AbhishekBiswal 13y ago
Seriously. There are many alternatives out there, but I still miss the good old google reader.
IvyMike 13y ago
> he would leave the company and build it on his own Every place I've ever worked has made me sign a piece of paper specifically trying to prevent this scenario.
- mcintyre1994 13y ago
  How exactly does that work? Are you just not allowed to earn money as self-employed for X time after leaving?
  - jclos 13y ago
    I think you just can't "compete" with your former employer for X years after leaving, i.e. building a product that is doing the same thing one of their products is doing.
    - pessimizer 13y ago
      How would he have been competing with Reader if he hadn't made it yet?
  - tsm 13y ago
    It's called a no-compete clause, and has very specific language about not making a product that'd be in the same space as something the company you just left makes.
    - tomkarlo 13y ago
      Non-compete clauses are very limited and hard to enforce in California (where most Google employees reside.) Assignment-of-invention might apply but if the individual has left the company (rather than building it in their free time while still employed) it would probably be very hard to prove that the original idea happened while they were still in the employ of the company, unless they documented it and shared those docs internally. (i.e. you can't pitch the idea internally, and then if rejected quit and build it yourself.)
  - 13y ago
volaski 13y ago
There's a big difference between "Google Reader Founder" and "A Google employee who was in charge of Google Reader project". Android was "founded". Google reader was not.
alxndr 13y ago
> ...if the idea came to him in today’s Google, he would leave the company and build it on his own rather than put it at the mercy of Google leadership. I wonder how much this rings true for anyone currently at Google.

234 points by lingben 13y ago

Love avacado. A coworker pointed it out just before valentines day, and now it's the default way my wife and I text each other.

massless 13y ago
I'm glad you like it! It's been fun to build.

lessnonymous 13y ago

I think Google would be wise to offer a discontinued product to the creator. If they have no interest in Reader any more, then Wetherell should be offered the product. Possibly he would need to pay something for it (preferably over a long term) or he would be given the source, but absolutely no users / user data. That way they get innovators to dream big ideas like AdSense, but if those ideas are rejected or later shuttered, the innovator gets to keep his idea.

mierle 13y ago
Unfortunately most Google software is practically inseparable from Google's infrastructure. Open sourcing stuff is hard, mostly thankless work.
- Mindless2112 13y ago
  Neat things do come of it though. Code Search, for example, ended up as an technical explanation [1], which I found fascinating, and example implementation [2], which I found useful. [1] http://swtch.com/~rsc/regexp/regexp4.html http://swtch.com/~rsc/regexp/regexp4.html [2] http://code.google.com/p/codesearch/ http://code.google.com/p/codesearch/
  - mdwrigh2 13y ago
    That's not actually the codebase for code search though -- it's a re-implementation of it done in the original authors new language.
    - Mindless2112 13y ago
      That's my point though: just because a retired product is heavily tied to Google's infrastructure doesn't mean that they couldn't release something useful out of it.
  - danso 13y ago
    This is a great read, thank you for posting it!

arkitaip 13y ago

Does 20% time even exist in today's Google?

Afforess 13y ago
No. It is not advertised as a benefit anymore: https://www.google.com/about/jobs/lifeatgoogle/benefits/ https://www.google.com/about/jobs/lifeatgoogle/benefits/ http://www.businessinsider.com/google-engineer-20-time-is-dead-2012-3 http://www.businessinsider.com/google-engineer-20-time-is-de...
- teebs 13y ago
  I don't work there, but I think it is still around. When I was considering whether to accept an offer there, everyone I asked said they had 20% time, although people used it different ways, and some people just did normal work in their 20% time. Can a Googler confirm?
  - sjbach 13y ago
    Yes, there are 20% projects.
  - proexploit 13y ago
    Like dsymonds mentioned in reply to the parent comment, 20% time is still alive and well.
dsymonds 13y ago
Yes, it still exists.
shazow 13y ago
It definitely existed when I was there a few months ago. Many people use the opportunity to explore possibilities of working with new teams in the future.
thrownaway2424 13y ago
Yes. It's called "Saturday".

nemothekid 13y ago

At the same time, I'm pretty sure an RSS Reader founded today inside Google would go the way of Wave. If Reader was ultimately unmonetizable, I'll cry when its gone, but I don't think anyone should feel entitled to a free service. I'm not a Google employee, but I think Reader is poor measure for how "open" Google is right now. I mean, christ, with Project Loon, I don't think they are any worse, however they have a limited amount of engineers and maintaining an RSS application in 2013 doesn't seem like a huge priority.

epistasis 13y ago
>If Reader was ultimately unmonetizable, I'll cry when its gone, but I don't think anyone should feel entitled to a free service. I don't think that it was not monetizable, any less than GMail is. Perhaps there were high, hidden costs in maintaining such a large feed database that would mean that a comparable revenue stream from Reader would not pay for itself nearly as much as GMail does. I think that in the end it's just that Google did not care about the Reader users. They didn't need them, there wasn't enough of a stink when they said they were going to get rid of Reader, either internally or externally.
- bryanbuckley 13y ago
  >I think that in the end it's just that Google did not care about the Reader users. What % of Google employees do you think are also Reader users? edit: I assume it is something like 90%. Which is why I'm pretty impressed that this change went through.
  - tempestn 13y ago
    I highly doubt it's even close to 90%. If it were, I think you're right that it's much less likely it would have been shut down. There are many very technical people out there that just don't find RSS fits with their workflow. Personally, I have a list of blogs I like to read in a couple bookmarks folders, and when I feel like reading them, I'll go to the bookmarks and see what's up. I don't really care if I miss posts, so I have no real need for a system that will catalog them all for me. I have tried a couple times to get into it, but just found it wasn't for me. (As a means of consuming media. I do use RSS for automating various processes, as well as the occasional RSS-to-email when I really need notifications for something (like rare classifieds posts I'm searching for).) Anyway, my point is, I'm pretty technical - I run a web based company and embrace plenty of modern technologies - and I never got into RSS. I'm fairly certain the majority of Google employees don't make regular use of an RSS reader either. (Although I imagine a significant minority do as well.)

mehrdada 13y ago

"Google Reader founder Chris Wetherell said that if the idea came to him in today’s Google, he would leave the company and build it on his own rather than put it at the mercy of Google leadership." Guess what dude?! If I were in that position and I were primarily worried about my project "being at the mercy of Google" (or any company that I don't have sufficient control over, for that matter), I would have left _anytime_. It should not be something you realize _today_. This is just whining over a "wrong" (presumably; assuming you would have pulled it off well) tradeoff you, yourself, made back in the day. It's not "today's Google vs. back then's Google". This is the tradeoff that you make anytime you decide to work for someone else; this is obvious and was obvious back in the day. If you had not seen it, the blame is wholly on you. Google Reader would not have been a guaranteed success that it was without Google's resources. If one does not have the balls to take the risk of working at his or her own startup, he or she is not entitled to the benefits either. In hindsight, it's too easy to say "I would have gone and pulled it off independently". I personally think Larry overall has been focusing on what matters and under his awesome leadership, Google is performing far better than Eric's time and this whole situation is not dissimilar to what happened at WWDC1997 and Steve's response to the random questioner in the audience: "...the hardest thing is how does that fit in to a cohesive larger vision that's gonna allow you to sell 8 billion dollars... 10 billion dollars... a product a year." http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FF-tKLISfPE http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FF-tKLISfPE

epistasis 13y ago
> This is just whining over a "wrong" (presumably; assuming you would have pulled it off well) tradeoff you, yourself, made back in the day. It's not "today's Google vs. back then's Google". I don't see any whining about a wrong, I see somebody saying that Google is different today from when it was back when he first made Reader. I don't see him regretting making Reader, just saying that today, because of cultural changes at Google, he'd do it outside of Google rather than inside of Google. This is not somebody regretting their actions, this is somebody saying that Google's culture is different today then it was back then. Clearly you're a fan of this new culture, and that's just fine, but don't miscontrue his words.
- 13y ago

cocoflunchy 13y ago

I feel like the only reason we hear so much about Google Reader is because the main users were either journalists or bloggers, which creates an extremely disproportionate noise / (former) user ratio.

rtpg 13y ago
that's exactly what happened. The biggest reason this was a bad mood for Google was because the entire tech journalist brain trust was so dependent on it. They spat on the people who can be the most fervent defenders of the company.
- olalonde 13y ago
  Moral of the story: they should never have built Google Reader in the first place?
  - elorant 13y ago
    The moral of the story is that you should never rely on a service which is given for free.
    - diminish 13y ago
      do you also mean Google Search?
      - jffry 13y ago
        If it doesn't cost money, then you're the product
        diminish 13y ago
        paying money doesn't mean you aren't the product.
        13y ago

piyush_soni 13y ago

He probably doesn't realize that it would have never been as successful without Google's data power. So yes, he could have opened his own company and released a Reader, just that no one would come to know about it.

massless 13y ago
Small correction: Actually, I've long asserted that Google's infrastructure and talent are key reasons that Reader was successful. I think that neither in the interview, nor the article, did I suggest that – though I could be mistaken.

visarga 13y ago

I don't understand - what is the fuss about Google Reader? I tried using it a few times. I prefer reddit to it. Would someone please explain what is so special about aggregating RSS? Did it have a trainable classifier we could teach to label RSS items or anything else besides simple management of what was read?

ScottWhigham 13y ago
Let's take it one level higher: is your question really "what is the fuss about RSS?" or is it your original? If you already understand RSS yet don't 'get' Google Reader, I understand that - I'm right there with you. There were/are far better ways to consume RSS for me and so GR was nothing special. If you don't 'get' RSS, then that's too big of a topic for here. You would want to search more about it. Sorry if this comes across as pedantic - that's not my intent!
- visarga 13y ago
  I understand RSS and I have written programs that parse RSS feeds. I was just wondering why was Google's aggregation better. It seems it has to do with the management of feeds and read/unread items, but that is just a basic interface. I would have loved to see auto classification, user defined topics and content recommendation. That would have made a much smarter RSS tool.
lnanek2 13y ago
Well, personally, I'd had hundreds of sites entered into it and the read tracking was much better than Reddit. On Reddit I have to vote on anything I want to disappear, Google Reader did it auto. Not that I would switch off anything I have entered that much data and state into anyway. It would have taken over a week to catch up on read status on all sites and switch over properly with no read queue on any of them. Users putting data in is the best way to get them to stick around. It's also terrible for your rep when you kill the product like this.

AbhishekBiswal 13y ago

Seriously. There are many alternatives out there, but I still miss the good old google reader.

IvyMike 13y ago

> he would leave the company and build it on his own Every place I've ever worked has made me sign a piece of paper specifically trying to prevent this scenario.

mcintyre1994 13y ago
How exactly does that work? Are you just not allowed to earn money as self-employed for X time after leaving?
- jclos 13y ago
  I think you just can't "compete" with your former employer for X years after leaving, i.e. building a product that is doing the same thing one of their products is doing.
  - pessimizer 13y ago
    How would he have been competing with Reader if he hadn't made it yet?
- tsm 13y ago
  It's called a no-compete clause, and has very specific language about not making a product that'd be in the same space as something the company you just left makes.
  - tomkarlo 13y ago
    Non-compete clauses are very limited and hard to enforce in California (where most Google employees reside.) Assignment-of-invention might apply but if the individual has left the company (rather than building it in their free time while still employed) it would probably be very hard to prove that the original idea happened while they were still in the employ of the company, unless they documented it and shared those docs internally. (i.e. you can't pitch the idea internally, and then if rejected quit and build it yourself.)
- 13y ago

volaski 13y ago

There's a big difference between "Google Reader Founder" and "A Google employee who was in charge of Google Reader project". Android was "founded". Google reader was not.

alxndr 13y ago

> ...if the idea came to him in today’s Google, he would leave the company and build it on his own rather than put it at the mercy of Google leadership. I wonder how much this rings true for anyone currently at Google.