(no subject)
Mar. 13th, 2013 06:20 pmLast December I made a post about rumors I'd heard through ![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png)
enotsola that Google was going to shut down Reader. Well, today it's confirmed on Google's blog and presumably you too, if you are a user, got the warning box when you went to the site. AUGH. WTF. "Over the years usage has declined," the blog post says. I wish they'd been more specific because I really want to know what their criteria are. (Does it amount to "fell below some arbitrary threshold for how much ad revenue it had to generate"?) I understand the concept of retiring services that are underused vs. the work put into them, but I just find it very hard to believe that Reader really falls into that category, at least to judge by the gnashing of teeth in comments on LifeHacker. I'm also annoyed and perplexed by the shorter lead-time on this announcement than on iGoogle, which they started warning about more than a year in advance (July 2012 for November 2013). Is Reader really the less-used and less-useful of those?
With the loss of these two features it makes me wonder, would I even need a Google account anymore. I barely use my Gmail account. Almost everything I do use it for could be easily migrated to one of my own hosted email addresses. I would not cry if I could not use G+. I use Google Drive for a few things and it is convenient, but I coped before with only being able to access a couple of spreadsheets and things from one computer, and I could cope again. I think the only Google thing I need that much, aside from Reader and iGoogle, is the fact that I am a member of one "native" Google Group (i.e. mailing list, not Usenet) and I don't think you can subscribe to one of those without a Google account. Aside from that, they will soon have almost run me off the ranch.
eta: see also:
http://marketingland.com/12-google-reader-alternatives-36158
http://ask.slashdot.org/story/13/03/14/0617246/whats-the-best-rss-reader-not-named-google-reader
http://www.extremetech.com/computing/101011-6-google-reader-replacements
http://blog.feedly.com/2013/03/14/google-reader/
enotsola that Google was going to shut down Reader. Well, today it's confirmed on Google's blog and presumably you too, if you are a user, got the warning box when you went to the site. AUGH. WTF. "Over the years usage has declined," the blog post says. I wish they'd been more specific because I really want to know what their criteria are. (Does it amount to "fell below some arbitrary threshold for how much ad revenue it had to generate"?) I understand the concept of retiring services that are underused vs. the work put into them, but I just find it very hard to believe that Reader really falls into that category, at least to judge by the gnashing of teeth in comments on LifeHacker. I'm also annoyed and perplexed by the shorter lead-time on this announcement than on iGoogle, which they started warning about more than a year in advance (July 2012 for November 2013). Is Reader really the less-used and less-useful of those?With the loss of these two features it makes me wonder, would I even need a Google account anymore. I barely use my Gmail account. Almost everything I do use it for could be easily migrated to one of my own hosted email addresses. I would not cry if I could not use G+. I use Google Drive for a few things and it is convenient, but I coped before with only being able to access a couple of spreadsheets and things from one computer, and I could cope again. I think the only Google thing I need that much, aside from Reader and iGoogle, is the fact that I am a member of one "native" Google Group (i.e. mailing list, not Usenet) and I don't think you can subscribe to one of those without a Google account. Aside from that, they will soon have almost run me off the ranch.
eta: see also:
http://marketingland.com/12-google-reader-alternatives-36158
http://ask.slashdot.org/story/13/03/14/0617246/whats-the-best-rss-reader-not-named-google-reader
http://www.extremetech.com/computing/101011-6-google-reader-replacements
http://blog.feedly.com/2013/03/14/google-reader/
