(no subject)

[arethinn]

Gah. Google is retiring not only iGoogle, but Reader. Reader! Losing iGoogle is an annoyance because I like it, but I depend on Reader for so much of my daily internet intake. I've experimented with Thunderbird and dedicated software and so far I just don't like any other solution. (I don't like the various "whitespace is good, let's add as much whitespace as possible" design decisions Google's made about Reader etc. either, but there's a Greasemonkey script for that.) What on earth am I gonna do?

It boggles my mind that this decision would seem to imply Google thinks people don't use/need RSS anymore (or at least not enough to justify maintaining a service for it). I was confused enough about this with iGoogle, but at least there, the question of "how do they think I'm getting this content instead that I don't need this anymore?" had the short, vague possible answer of "apps." Do they think people aren't sending out content by RSS anymore? (Like, I dunno, every Blogspot blog Google hosts...) Or is it that they think people aren't bothering to subscribe to RSS feeds because the masses are getting updates some other way? But in that case, what is the expected vector...? (And even if it's "Twitter" or "Facebook"... the content has to get there somehow, and how else if not by rss?)

Comments

[frameacloud]

Where'd you hear of this?
What RSS feed reader are we supposed to replace Reader with?

[enotsola]

I don't think I've seen anything official on it yet, but it is definitely what the rumour mill is churning out. iGoogle alone is going to make me sad. If they end of life reader, I'll explode.

[arethinn]

From enotsola. I assumed when he told me that he was quoting a reliable source, if not an official one, but he can't seem to find the page he was reading now.

If true, I don't think it's that they're expecting people to use something else instead - I would think it's because they figure enough people aren't using the format at all so why support a service for it, which was what was boggling my mind (where did they get that idea, if that is indeed part of the reasoning).

[contrarywise]

This is news to me, but sadly, it's believable news. Google has a record of fucking up perfectly good tools and products and replacing them with random crapola that's mostly useless to me. Based on a friend's rec, I just signed up for NewsBlur, and so far so good. It imported all my Reader feeds in seconds, and the few that didn't come through at first were easily re-imported and fixed. I went for the cheapo Premium package ($12/year) to get unlimited feeds and some other useful features. It'll take a bit of getting used to, but I'm fine with a little learning curve to keep all my feeds intact and accessible. I never used iGoogle, so I won't miss it, but Reader was my first and, until tonight, only RSS reader. Feh.