Google Reader fail: Internet outraged (again)
Seriously, how am I going to do my job? Every morning I turn on my iPad and open Google Reader. And on one page, I can get stories from dozens of newspapers and blogs and that’s how I find stories, including this one.
And if I want to add another newspapers to my Reader, I just plug in the RSS feed. But when Google takes it away in July?
Joe Hall is an amateur coder and he says: chill out.
“RSS is not dying, RSS is not going anywhere,” Hall said. He says think of Google Reader as a mailbox and RSS as the postal service, or a way to deliver content. So Google takes your mailbox.
“That doesn’t stop the post office, the post office is still going to deliver mail,” Hall said. He adds get another mailbox or another reader, there are plenty of them.
But funny he should mention the post office, which is also trouble. Google says its shutting down its Reader because fewer people are using it, said Whit Andrews, an analyst at Gartner.
“That’s not necessarily a surprise, it’s not something where loads of kids say, boy I can’t wait to get to my RSS feed,” Andrews said. Instead, they’re turning to Twitter and Facebook for news.
Google is a known for experimenting with loads of products from self-driving cars to the world’s biggest digital library. Andrews says since Google’s co-founder Larry Page took over as CEO in 2011, “it’s been pretty clear that he’s trying to streamline the company.”
So far, Page has killed about 70 Google projects. But one man’s cast-off is another man’s gold. Since the news broke of the Reader’s imminent death, competitors like Feedly and Flipboard have been stepping up.
And the tech thinking is that the Reader’s end might be the beginning of something better.
There’s a lot happening in the world. Through it all, Marketplace is here for you.
You rely on Marketplace to break down the world’s events and tell you how it affects you in a fact-based, approachable way. We rely on your financial support to keep making that possible.
Your donation today powers the independent journalism that you rely on. For just $5/month, you can help sustain Marketplace so we can keep reporting on the things that matter to you.
