Google Reader Being Retired

Petition by abrotman · 2013-03-13 12:42 · Score: 5, Interesting

For what it's worth ...

https://www.change.org/petitions/google-keep-google-reader-running

Re:Petition by niftydude · 2013-03-13 13:03 · Score: 4, Insightful

Signed.

I use this every day - and most people in my office who see how useful it is also convert.

I'm not interested in the social integration/people following me/me following people that things like google takeout supply, just let me read my feeds in piece!

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You can never know everything, and part of what you do know will always be wrong. Perhaps even the most important part.
Re:Petition by niftydude · 2013-03-13 13:04 · Score: 1

*peace*, damn.

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You can never know everything, and part of what you do know will always be wrong. Perhaps even the most important part.
Re:Petition by Nerdfest · 2013-03-13 13:10 · Score: 1

Likewise. Everyone who sees me using it becomes a user. This is quite disappointing. I wonder if they can recommend anything that replaces anywhere close to the functionality ...
Re:Petition by meiao · 2013-03-13 13:28 · Score: 2

I'll sign it. But if it is not for every person on Earth, Google won't care about it.
See find as you type in Chrome.
https://code.google.com/p/chromium/issues/detail?id=150
Re:Petition by interkin3tic · 2013-03-13 13:44 · Score: 4, Insightful

Nice thought, but I think they know how many people are using it on a regular basis, and have probably figured out that if you're using it, you probably don't want to see it go away.
Re:Petition by thecombatwombat · 2013-03-13 13:45 · Score: 2

They probably won't, but I recommend Fever (www.feedafever.com.) You host it yourself, so it's not getting retired anytime soon. Wish it were open source so I could fix a few bugs, but it still works great.
Re:Petition by massysett · 2013-03-13 14:40 · Score: 4, Insightful

First I see people using Change.org to complain about Electronic Arts and its DRM; now this, a "petition" to ask Google to keep a product?
To me it cheapens the notion of a "petition" to use it for this. The Change.org homepage spotlights domestic violence, migrant workers, firefighters, and more.
It just seems whiny and self-entitled to me to gear up and "petition" a private company on such trivial stuff as an RSS reader, or DRM. Just find another reader. But, if Change.org does not want to filter out this crap...

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Penny - plain text accounting
Re:Petition by All_One_Mind · 2013-03-13 14:43 · Score: 4, Informative

I used to use Google Reader but switched to Netvibes long ago. Provides the same features, similiar interface, but a lot more under the hood and better theme selection/customization imo. Plus, it's not Google, which is a big plus for me. Anything non-MS, non-Apple, non-Oracle, non-Google is a huge win in my book. Just my two cents, since you asked for recommendations.
Re:Petition by ColdWetDog · 2013-03-13 14:47 · Score: 4, Funny

Groovy.

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Faster! Faster! Faster would be better!
Re:Petition by Hadlock · 2013-03-13 15:58 · Score: 1

I wonder, why don't they just sell the Reader service? Surely someone (Microsoft? Facebook?) would find it as a useful service and bring them a large installed base. Or alternately, why not just integrate it better with their existing facebook+ service that google has been pushing on everyone for a year now? Killing the goose that lays the golden social networking eggs seems pretty dumb. They also nuked a bunch of neat community features in Google Groups, and I was a little surprised to see them flat out abandon Wave. Absorbing those users in to their flagship product seems a lot more productive than actively driving them to your competitors.

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moox. for a new generation.
Re:Petition by Ford+Prefect · 2013-03-13 16:09 · Score: 4, Informative

If you want an open source, host-it-yourself web-app then there's Tiny Tiny RSS, as recommended by a co-worker.
The site's been up and down all day for some completely inexplicable reason, but the brief glimpse I got of the live demo was pretty impressive. I escaped Google Reader nearly a year ago (the Google Plus 'integration' had been annoying me, and in a fit of pique I got rid of all Google dependencies I had) and while I've been mostly happy with the desktop-app Vienna RSS for Mac OS X, further alternatives are always welcome. I imagine someone will get an open cross-client sync working now that Google Reader is going away...

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Tedious Bloggy Stuff - hooray?
Re:Petition by icebike · 2013-03-13 16:17 · Score: 5, Insightful

Signed.
I'm not interested in the social integration/people following me/me following people that things like google takeout supply, just let me read my feeds in piece!
Agreed. I need a replacement that syncs across multiple platforms. I don't need a magazine style layout. I learned to read. I don't need pictures. And I don't need some social community to validate my reading choices.

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Sig Battery depleted. Reverting to safe mode.
Re:Petition by icebike · 2013-03-13 16:23 · Score: 2

Nothing even remotely like reader.
There is no app. It depends on a browser. And it's curated? Really?

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Sig Battery depleted. Reverting to safe mode.
Re:Petition by icebike · 2013-03-13 16:43 · Score: 1

Sell it?
Why not just monetize Reader themselves?

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Sig Battery depleted. Reverting to safe mode.
Re:Petition by Anonymous Coward · 2013-03-13 16:55 · Score: 1

I've been using TT-RSS for several months now, and I can definitely second the recommendation. Never had any problems with it at all.
It's all open source PHP so easy enough to modify yourself: the only modification I've made to it is have the "Starred" articles (articles I flag for later reading) show up in the Starred Articles count whether or not they've been read (by default it only counts up starred unread articles).
The official (GPL'd) Android client for it is definitely worth the couple of bucks too.
The server also has an API if you want to develop your own client interface, but between the stock web interface it comes with and the cheap Android client I've never needed anything more.
Re:Petition by viperidaenz · 2013-03-13 17:19 · Score: 1

They already know how many people use their service and how often. What is a petition going to tell them that they don't already know?
Re:Petition by Hadlock · 2013-03-13 17:33 · Score: 2

Because clearly they're not making enough money from it to justify keeping it around, and/or it doesn't fit their future vision of the company? I'm not google, but clearly they have their reasons.

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moox. for a new generation.
Re:Petition by HaroldBakker · 2013-03-13 18:19 · Score: 1

Extremely well put. I wish I had some mod points for you.
Re:Petition by TheABomb · 2013-03-13 19:52 · Score: 1

Yep, just like every person in the world uses Latitude and Orkut.

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MSIE: The world's most standards-complaint web browser.
Re:Petition by BitZtream · 2013-03-13 20:00 · Score: 1

Oh please! If people use this software and it makes their day a little easier? Then they should damned well be able to organize and tell the company they want it kept.
I think the problem the person you are replying to has is that its very sad that you are SO FREAKING IGNORANT of the real issues that you should be talking about and signing petitions for.
While I disagree with most of the radical left opinions you mentioned, its important to note that those issues ARE IMPORTANT ISSUES regardless of which side you are on. You'll have to pry my weapons from my cold dead hands, but I still respect the motivation and importance of the issue. A petition for Google Reader? No one fucking cares, I know this because ... its going away and no one is saying loudly 'we can import your google reader feeds, move to us!!!!!'. Second, and this is the part thats actually important ... Reader ceasing to exist will have no detectable influence on your life. The gun debate most certainly will, regardless of which side you believe to be right or what ever position you hold.

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Re:Petition by TwentyCharsIsNotEnou · 2013-03-13 20:22 · Score: 1

Maybe they've underestimated how many people really care?

Maybe it's a very unpopular decision within Google, and those employees can back up their complaints with this petition (I'm sure not everyone has access to Google usage statistics).

Surely it's worth a try anyway.
Re:Petition by AdamWill · 2013-03-13 20:43 · Score: 1

Ditto AC, been using tt-rss for years, it works great. Has a good Android app too, though I don't think there's an iOS one. I don't know if there are any public shared installations of it out there for those who don't run their own servers, though, and if there are, they're probably getting killed right now...
Re:Petition by garaged · 2013-03-13 20:45 · Score: 1

If reader goes away I will spend 30-60 minutes a day using a different app for RSS news reading, so I hope I find en equivalent app or my life will be changed a little bit.

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Re:Petition by lxs · 2013-03-13 20:46 · Score: 1

The whole point of a petition is that you clearly attach your identity to your position for all the world to see. if you're not willing to do that keep on cowering in anonymity, but nobody will listen.
(Given that it's an online petition nobody will listen anyway but my point still stands.)
Re:Petition by bickerdyke · 2013-03-13 20:47 · Score: 1

Maybe they've underestimated how many people really care?
As in really care, but for some strange reason not using it?

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bickerdyke
Re:Petition by Baki · 2013-03-13 20:59 · Score: 1

I switched from google reader to tiny tiny rss (on my home server) a while back. It is quite nice and, purely for reading rss feeds, up to par with google reader.
An extra advantage is that google no longer knows even more about your interests and preferences.
Re:Petition by TwentyCharsIsNotEnou · 2013-03-13 21:35 · Score: 1

No, I mean those who do use it, and are now having second thoughts about everything Google.

I think this has finally got the message through to many people (myself included), that Google will can anything. Reader wasn't exactly an experiment - it was almost 8 years old. Not really in sync with their push for us to rely more and more on the "cloud".
Re:Petition by golden+age+villain · 2013-03-13 21:47 · Score: 1

Can anyone recommend a replacement? Maybe a lightweight app?
Re:Petition by Captain+Hook · 2013-03-13 21:58 · Score: 1

Personally I'm not dumping Google altogether, I'll still use search, maybe watch the occasional youtube video.

However, with iGoogle and now Google Reader going away, my reason for actually login into Google every day is rapidly deminishing. My browsers are all set to clean out all cookies and persistent data at application close so me login into my account every day is the best way google have for tracking me personally. They are gateway services, not providing much for google directly but being that first point of contact which needs login credentials for alot of people.

Only Google Mail will now need me to login and I pick that up on my phone but I still do most of my browsing via PC with no direct link from my phone to the PCs I use. Google's attempt to socialise their services just makes it harder for them to track people like me.

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These comments are my personal opinions and do not necessarily reflect the opinions of the other voices in my head.
Re:Petition by kestasjk · 2013-03-13 22:11 · Score: 4, Funny

Maybe start a petition?

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Re:Petition by RoboJ1M · 2013-03-13 22:23 · Score: 1

OK, I don't get it.
Why would you retire something that has a purpose which has not been usurped by anything else?
They're retiring it so one could assume that there IS something that is better, or at least more popular.
What, in Google's services or somewhere else, has replaced or improved upon the ability to cloud-store a selection of RSS news feeds so I don't have to have them stored purely as bookmarks on a local machine?
Chrome perhaps? That's got cloud-stored bookmarks, maybe it's getting/got RSS support like Firefox?
Re:Petition by DrXym · 2013-03-13 22:28 · Score: 1

I like iGoogle too and I do not understand what they expect users to use instead when it goes. I like having a home page where I can slap together some news panels, some rss feeds, some stock info, weather etc. and have it all in a single page load. There is no single Google app for Windows or Android that does that.
I'll have to pick up and move over to Yahoo or MSN or something which offers this home page functionality. And my activity on Google will diminish accordingly. While I'm sure I'll still Google a lot, it certainly won't be to the extent that I did previously. It's not like Bing is a bad search engine anyway.
Re:Petition by RoboJ1M · 2013-03-13 23:03 · Score: 4, Insightful

"We originally intended to include RSS support by default as a native feature of Google Chrome (and we still might in the future) but we decided instead to implement this as an extension. This decision was made based on our philosophy of trying to limit ourselves to adding only the UI features that a vast majority of users need and allow each user to customize the browsers to fit their needs with Extensions. Given that most people are not familiar with and don't consume RSS feeds, we thought that RSS support would be a better fit as an extension, at least to begin with."
http://www.kunocreative.com/blog/bid/71409/Google-Chrome-s-RSS-Support-Problem-and-How-To-Fix-It-sort-of
So there you go folks, Google have decided RSS is dead.
Kind of fair point, I guarantee the only people I know who know what an RSS feed is are the developers sitting in this room with me.
Not a single member-of-the-80%-public I ask will know what an RSS feed it or how to subscribe to one.
Then know how to Like thinks on Facebook.
That's it.
Of course if it had had decent support hard wired in to Android/Chrome then people would be using them, albeit without technical knowledge of what they were doing I think.
Re:Petition by vulcan1701 · 2013-03-13 23:27 · Score: 1

No one fucking cares, I know this because ... its going away and no one is saying loudly 'we can import your google reader feeds, move to us!!!!!'.
On some of the articles about this, a developer for www.swarmiq.com has been spreading his link www.swarmiq.com/register/GOOGLEREADERISDEAD to promote their reader which is similar to Google Reader. And, yes, they can import your Google Reader RSS feeds in a few seconds.
Re:Petition by drinkypoo · 2013-03-13 23:51 · Score: 1

Next time use a petition site that supports no javascript if you want help from slashdotters HTH HAND

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Re:Petition by ThePhilips · 2013-03-14 00:08 · Score: 1

For what it's worth...
Not much, not much.
Google is the "phone company" of our days:
"We don't care, we don't have to... we're the phone company." -- Lily Tomlin
P.S. And I share the sentiment of many: Google is in the race to the bottom. As a fresh Android user, I was surprised to find that many default applications on my Galaxy S3 Mini are from Samsung. After correcting that and switching to Google's originals, and trying to use them for about a week, I found that only the "Talk" is useful - the rest, with the Chrome browser on the top of the list, are simply way too skin-deep "beautiful." There are no relevant to me features - if there are features at all - but there are piles of minor annoyances. (Google Now is one huge pile of annoyances, since once activated, due to a bug (can't open menu) it can't be deactivated. G+ lack focus and literally everything too many clicks away. Vanila player is very )

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All hope abandon ye who enter here.
Re:Petition by Geeky · 2013-03-14 00:42 · Score: 1

I know what you mean about default apps - my HTC phone has some nice widgets that I later discovered are HTC only. I got a Nexus 7, and it's missing a lot of stuff that I took for granted (no tasks widget!!?).

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Sigs are so 1990s. No way would I be seen dead with one.
Re:Petition by Bill_the_Engineer · 2013-03-14 01:48 · Score: 1

The large number of whiny and self-entitled petitions that were emailed to me is what prompted me to unsubscribe from their service and I haven't gone back to look at the petitions again.

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These comments are my own and do not necessarily reflect the views or opinions of my employer or colleagues...
Re:Petition by Urban+Garlic · 2013-03-14 01:58 · Score: 1

> No one fucking cares, I know this because ... its going away and no one is saying loudly 'we can import your google reader feeds, move to us!!!!!'.
Actually, that's exactly what feedly was saying on their home page last night. They seem to have a good feature set, and run on all the platforms I care about, but their servers buckled under the load yesterday, so maybe not.

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2*3*3*3*3*11*251
Re:Petition by Ksevio · 2013-03-14 02:09 · Score: 1

How many successful online petitions have you seen? More than 0?
Re:Petition by nfk · 2013-03-14 02:20 · Score: 1

I've been using Tiny Tiny RSS for some time now, and to me it is even better than Google Reader, for one reason: whereas in Google Reader you could share articles with Google+, in Tiny Tiny RSS you can publish articles you like to a public RSS feed.
I'm a linux user, so it's a big bonus that applications like liferea and newsbeuter integrate neatly with Tiny Tiny RSS. Add to that the Android app and I can always have my news in sync, wherever I read them.
Re:Petition by punkrockguy318 · 2013-03-14 02:22 · Score: 1

No one fucking cares, I know this because ... its going away and no one is saying loudly 'we can import your google reader feeds, move to us!!!!!'.
http://blog.feedly.com/2013/03/14/google-reader/
http://getprismatic.com/reader
there are others but I don't remember what they were
Re:Petition by thomasw_lrd · 2013-03-14 02:50 · Score: 1

I think they want everybody to use Google Currents, but I'm not a big fan of it.

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21st Century Renaissance Man
Re:Petition by ceoyoyo · 2013-03-14 02:53 · Score: 1

Yeah right. The general public might not know what an RSS feed is (they also don't know what TCP/IP is) but a lot of them use them all the time through all those news readers that are so popular on smart phones and tablets.
RSS isn't dead. Google has decided RSS in the browser isn't an essential feature. I agree. I use RSS every day but I've never used it in a browser, except to see if it was useful.
Re:Petition by tlhIngan · 2013-03-14 03:05 · Score: 1

First I see people using Change.org to complain about Electronic Arts and its DRM; now this, a "petition" to ask Google to keep a product?
To me it cheapens the notion of a "petition" to use it for this. The Change.org homepage spotlights domestic violence, migrant workers, firefighters, and more.
It just seems whiny and self-entitled to me to gear up and "petition" a private company on such trivial stuff as an RSS reader, or DRM. Just find another reader. But, if Change.org does not want to filter out this crap...
It is, however, a fascinating look at society as a whole. If you ever wonder why politicians can get away with what they want (drone strikes on citizens, enhanced spying, copyright non-reform, patent non-reform, climate change, etc), just take a look at what people feel is important to them.
Same goes for why the /. crowd won't seem to get through to the general populace.
Those whiny and self-serving petitions show what people really care about. Unfiltered, they're a really neat look into what people care about, and why "stuff that matters" get drowned out. Hell, given the petitions, it's obvious that the stuff government is doing against its people aren't something that matters.
Re:Petition by jigamo · 2013-03-14 04:53 · Score: 1

This article has an interview with an early creator of Google Reader. I found it to be really informative. In discussing what it takes from Google to make reader work, it says:

Wetherell said that it took a lot to make Google Reader work.
For instance, it was Google Crawler that gave the system ability to make lightning-fast connections and bring up recommendations. It is one of the main reasons it cannot be open sourced. The systems are too intertwined with Google’s search and other infrastructure to be sold as well.
I think that explains why Google Reader won't be sold (or open sourced).

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Re:Petition by BlueRaja · 2013-03-14 07:16 · Score: 1

$500 a month if I want to be able to search my feeds? Are they fucking insane?
Re:Petition by Spiridios · 2013-03-14 07:32 · Score: 1

Nice thought, but I think they know how many people are using it on a regular basis, and have probably figured out that if you're using it, you probably don't want to see it go away.
Judging by how every major alternative effectively got ddos'd last nite when Google announced this, I can't imagine the number of users is insignificant. Google is most likely not canceling this because it's not popular, they're canceling it because it loses too much money.
Re:Petition by klo+uo · 2013-03-14 07:57 · Score: 1

Signed! Thanks for letting us know about this petition
Re:Petition by hairyfeet · 2013-03-14 08:05 · Score: 1

And you sir are a self important douchebag, shows we both have issues don't it? Who in the fuck do you think you are, getting to decide what is important and what isn't. The average user from what we are reading here spends 2 hours a day, times half a million users that is a million man hours that is gonna quickly climb a LOT higher because so far every "replacement" named here has been buggy, feature poor, or just plain broken.
And you show exactly why it should NOT be in the hands of self important douchebags, after all according to the left YOU ARE PART OF THE PROBLEM because you won't give up your guns and cower in fear of the criminals. Again look at what they are listing as "important" on that site, its about 3 miles to the left of outright communism. I've seen petitions there calling the securing of our borders "racist", those of us that believe in the second amendment "thugs", even petitions saying Obama should be given a blank check because he's a democrat and is never wrong, right? I mean look at the fucking gun petitions and we are talking about a POTUS whose AG committed CRIMINAL ACTS trying to get guns banned yet we should reward him for pulling a false flag according to those petitions!
So you see what YOU consider important and what the radical left considers important are 2 totally different things and if ONLY "important" petitions were allowed? I have a feeling you and I would never fill out a single one because it would be nothing but ultra left NPR level shit like how they thought the California taxpayer should cut checks to illegals because there wasn't a crop to pick one year...really? We should be paying criminals because the jobs they were doing illegally wasn't there?
And the liberals can waste their fucking mod points but I'm damned sick of it. I'm sick of common sense being a God damned dirty word, I'm sick of our laws and constitution being pissed on, I'm damned sick of "political correctness" and I'm fucking sick of certain classes being "protected" because they aren't YT so they must be right even when they are wrong. Fuck you as YOU ARE THE PROBLEM because its YOU ultra left batshit brigade that has let the ultra right keep control for so long because you are so far away from mainstream you make the right and their corporate asskissing look positively middle of the road by comparison!
I hate to say it as I can't stand the man but Rand Paul was right in that we need a new republican party but we need a new democratic party as well because BOTH sides have gone fucking whack a doodle!

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ACs don't waste your time replying, your posts are never seen by me.
Re:Petition by rsborg · 2013-03-14 08:08 · Score: 3, Interesting

So there you go folks, Google have decided RSS is dead.
From a monetary standpoint, they're probably correct. RSS is as dead as SMTP, in that 99% of people using RSS don't run their own aggregators or feel comfortable with the format, but still benefit from it (i.e., podcasts). In other words it is part of the basic infrastructure of the Internet at large.
Of course, what do you expect from an organization that tried to defeat RSS earlier by supporting ATOM instead (Reader was cool as it supported both, and so did many other
Let's look at all the things Google gains by killing Reader:
* Non-savvy users are pushed back to the content website, which are probably displaying Google's display ads ($)
* Savvy users who like "social" are pushed to G+
* The remainder are just using resources and not giving them anything (and the probably block ads too) - so let them pay for their own aggregator/reader.
Two of the three things above are about money and the other one is a dig against their competitor (Facebook). Long-gone are the days of "don't be evil", but it's questionable whether that premise was ever rally valid or workable. Hate the playa or the game, Google's all about the money now.

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Re:Petition by Crosshair84 · 2013-03-14 16:12 · Score: 1

Ugh, so busy at work, so little time to respond to posts. I'll have to do just this one.

Well said. This is not a left right issue. Whatever your political views it should be very clear that the current system has no interest in what is best for the people.

When it comes to economics and politics, Hairyfeet and I are polar opposites on many issues, but we both agree that government needs to work in the interests of THE PEOPLE. Where we differ is how we go about achieving that, but at least people like him and I realize that politics is not a dammed football game, so we can at least sit down and discuss what WE think should be done, not debate what Nancy Pelosi and Mitt Romeny think should be done. I wish I could take the time to have a detailed debate in some threads, but nowhere will you see either of us defending the two parties like a frigin sports team.

So much of this crap should NOT be a left/right issue. I will repeat, "POLITICS IS NOT A DAMMED FOOTBALL GAME."

It doesn't matter if you're a borderline Communist or a Free-Market Libertarian, You should be against ANY politician who engages or protects those who engage in false flag operations, as their only purpose is to do what the people would not ordinarily support or allow. Every single member of Congress should have demanded Holder be removed at the very least and refused to pass anything until that was done.

You should be against the disarmament of the population regardless of political leanings. The only purpose of such a move is to make exploitation of the people easier. Seriously, what would you do if someone asked you to remove all the fire extinguishers from your home because the fire department will take care of everything? You'd rightfully think, "What the hell are you planning that you don't want me to have a fire extinguisher?"

Making the issue of guards in school a left right issue is simply shameful. Hairyfeet is 100% correct. Why the hell is this a left/right issue? This is a common sense issue. Every single mass shooting, except one, over the last 50 years was done in a "gun free zone". If only all our problems were this simple to solve. We found out in the 70's that aluminum wiring causes house fires, what did we do? Stop using aluminum wiring in houses. Likewise here, we find that crazy nutcases like to attack places where victims are disarmed and can't fight back. Solution, stop having places where victims are disarmed. Stop pretending that people want to hand out M-16's to every teacher.

The issue of drones should be a common sense issue as well. We have bombed rescue workers on several occasions. Think about that for a minute. We are using the exact same tactics that the terrorists we are supposedly fighting are using and being even more indiscriminate than them at times. We are killing people based on the president assuring us that he has evidence that these are bad people, but of course he won't let anyone see this evidence. What the farking hell? This is 3rd world Banana Republic crap and you people are going along with it? Are you that dense to NOT see how supporting this WILL bite you in the ass in some future administration? They have shown, clear as day, that they cannot be trusted with them.

These people are serving THEIR OWN INTERESTS, the majority of them couldn't give a sh*t about you me or your family. Their actions don't serve the people's interests in the short or long term, regardless of your political views. They use our troops like they are playing a game of "Risk". They ignore the ticking time bomb that is our entitlement programs, they would rather let the system collapse all at once, leaving millions destitute, rather than discuss solutions that will minimize the hardship endured and risk their re-election. Hell, the entitlement programs are nothing more than a gigantic vote buying scheme to keep people from criticizing the Federal government. Just go look at how the South effectively got jack shit during the New Deal, even though they were the
Re:Petition by hairyfeet · 2013-03-15 08:26 · Score: 1

This is why we need a "Common Sense Party" Crosshair, so we could sit down as civilized human beings and fix the damned problems without it becoming a fricking "ballclub issue" which is what the whole left/right bullshit has degraded into. I mean protecting out kids with security? Obama's kids have security why in the fuck does Johnny Average deserve less because he is poor? We put fucking security in our damned malls to protect the stores, our kids deserve less than the cheap junk at the Staples?
And even with us on polar opposites we can both see that common sense states that criminals don't follow gun laws. I mean how many decades has dope been illegal? And yet I can score any drug I want in less than an hour, with a border that leaks like a sieve do they HONESTLY want us to believe the criminals would have more trouble scoring an AK than scoring a bad of weed?
As far as drones...its a HELL of a lot worse than that Crosshair, look up on Wikileaks the shit that was being pulled under the protection of the US gov, including a PMC selling 10 year old boys as rape toys to get better deals on their gun sales. the same PMC sold 11 year old girls in Kosovo and the US gov told the consulate to "hush it up" and pay off the officials both times...WTF? We ARE the bad guys Crosshair, we ARE the thugs spreading death and misery. Look up General Smedley and his retirement speech, waaay back in the 20s he was talking about how he was a "hired thug of the corps" and how the marines were being used to make sure some corp got a better deal and here we are in 2013 and nothing has changed! yes the Islamists are batshit, but how can you hold yourselves up as a better example when you are dropping bombs on rescue workers and covering up child slavers?
The only subject I'd say we disagree on is welfare, personally I think its just a modern version of the "bread and circuses" to keep the peasants from rising up. Look at how when things were this bad in the 30s you had talks of actual government overthrow for a communist or fascist new direction, yet now with the economy a corpse nobody says squat, why? Why do they put up with such crooked leaders? Because their bellies are full and they have dope and porn, that's why. I think that pot will be legal soon NOT because the gov can see that its common sense not to throw your own people in jail for so called "sin" crimes, but because pot makes you passive and mellow. I know that if I was running a dictatorship I'd want pot to be plentiful and cheap,, easy to get away with shit if a large chunk of the populace is fried and watching cartoons.
But the system has become so damned corrupt the POTUS has become a joke, hell I can you name a POTUS of the last 25+ years that you could honestly say "That was the best man for the job" with a straight face? Bill Hicks nailed it 20+ years ago "I believe the puppet on the left shares MY beliefs, well I think the puppet on the right has MY interests at heart...hey wait a minute, there's one guy working both puppets!" I mean why do you think stupid issues like gays in the military or arguing about the border are the ONLY issues we ever get? Because the big corps don't give a rat's ass either way (after all they can just import more H1-Bs so they don't need Paco) so they let the peasants argue over stupid shit while they empty the coffers and quietly ship it overseas. A perfect example, why does it not matter if a D or an R is in the big chair there is ALWAYS a member of Goldman Sachs in the seat at the Fed? Because as Rothschild stated "Give me control of the currency and I care not who runs the country'.
I'll just end with this...anybody who thinks voting will do jack shit is frankly delusional. Even though I'm as anti-libertarian as they come I was disgusted at the "Jon Stewart Ron Paul" video where they showed the SECOND it looked like he might win a couple of places? he became "He who shall NOT be named". It was truly pathetic to watch the MSM tapdance to make sure that the approved shills stayed in the spotlight, in that v

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ACs don't waste your time replying, your posts are never seen by me.

Still not using bloody Google+ by blarkon · 2013-03-13 12:43 · Score: 5, Interesting

Refugees are already saying that http://theoldreader.com/ is the replacement.

Re:Still not using bloody Google+ by Cammi · 2013-03-13 13:08 · Score: 2, Informative

I have over 200 reads. TheOldReader dies after importing 3 .... so no, it's not an alternative.
Re:Still not using bloody Google+ by Anonymous Coward · 2013-03-13 14:06 · Score: 1

netvibes is a better choice.
Re:Still not using bloody Google+ by Anonymous Coward · 2013-03-13 16:15 · Score: 1

Thanks, but not for me... I don't care about the write access so much; I just don't want to share my entire contact list with every web service I use...
"The Old Reader has full access to your contact list. We only need to read it to help you find fellow The Old Reader users among your contacts, however Google provides no way to request read-only access to your contacts using oauth API. We will never alter your contact list in any way, we promise;"
Re:Still not using bloody Google+ by Anonymous Coward · 2013-03-13 16:22 · Score: 2, Funny

"3 feeds ought to be enough for anybody." -Some Asshole
Re:Still not using bloody Google+ by icebike · 2013-03-13 16:46 · Score: 4, Informative

TheOldReader is all about social whoring and very little about being a cross platform syncing reader.

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Sig Battery depleted. Reverting to safe mode.
Re:Still not using bloody Google+ by ynp7 · 2013-03-13 22:42 · Score: 1

Seems reasonably nice, but I don't think it'll work for me. One of the main things I use Google Reader for is aggregating podcast feeds and Old Reader doesn't even provide a direct link to the audio file, let alone give me the option to listen to it inline. Anyone got other alternatives that will integrate media into the RSS reader itself?
Too bad Google didn't just make it a subscription service. I'd pay a pretty decent amount of money to keep Google Reader around.
Re:Still not using bloody Google+ by Pigeon451 · 2013-03-14 01:05 · Score: 1

Seems to require a facebook or google+ account. While I have both, I do not want my rss reader integrated into social apps.
Re:Still not using bloody Google+ by Pec · 2013-03-14 02:40 · Score: 1

Still slashdotted.
G+ is not useful for feed reading.

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This is a .sig

Alternatives? by jordan314 · 2013-03-13 12:44 · Score: 4, Interesting

I'm super unhappy about this, I use google reader every day and Google Currents is no alternative. Which alternatives do people like?

Re:Alternatives? by Anonymous Coward · 2013-03-13 12:49 · Score: 3, Interesting

They're getting rammed hard with traffic right now but try one of these:
http://www.newsblur.com/
http://theoldreader.com/
Re:Alternatives? by Anonymous Coward · 2013-03-13 12:56 · Score: 5, Insightful

Google is famous for just dropping products, if you are not prepared for your favorite thing to just 'disappear' or a forced migration don't rely on Google.
Re:Alternatives? by detritus. · 2013-03-13 13:01 · Score: 3, Informative

Netvibes is a good alternative that has a "Reader" mode plus a widget mode. However one thing I noticed with both Google Reader and especially Netvibes is it can choke and become sluggish with several thousand unread items in my browser.
As far as native clients go in Linuxland, Liferea is a maturing and blazingly fast GTK client that suits my needs.
Re:Alternatives? by jseale · 2013-03-13 13:16 · Score: 1

Pulse and Taptu are nice. They're compatible with just about everything. They have web interfaces (both of which are top notch), and they use up very little flash memory. Taptu's even compatible with Google ChromeBooks.
Re:Alternatives? by ElmoGonzo · 2013-03-13 13:34 · Score: 1

Before I found Reader, I had RSS feeds grouped together in a bookmarks folder. I suppose I could go back to that system but I've gotten used to hitting the same list of unread items (and the option to keep any of them unread) from any of my several desktop browsers or from the mobile device. It really is a shame that something which is useful (but not used by "enough" ad-reading wetware devices) is considered obsolete so quickly. I guess Google wants to invest more of their money in privacy-invading street-view units.
Re:Alternatives? by Nidi62 · 2013-03-13 13:35 · Score: 5, Insightful

Google is famous for just dropping products, if you are not prepared for your favorite thing to just 'disappear' or a forced migration don't rely on Google.
I'm still dreading this November when I have to find a replacement for iGoogle. That's honestly the only thing that takes me to Google every day,

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The only thing necessary for evil to triumph is for it to be pitted against a slightly greater evil
Re:Alternatives? by ClioCJS · 2013-03-13 13:44 · Score: 2

honestly... that sounds really awful. but at least you're stubborn enough to make something you want for yourself, which is more than 99%. Kudos to you.

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-Clio
Karma: Bad (mostly from not giving a fuck)
Blog: http://clintjcl.wordpress.com
Re:Alternatives? by Omestes · 2013-03-13 13:52 · Score: 4, Informative

I like both of these services, and use them... but they are very different from Reader. Reader is for feeds that I read over 60% of, and want to read every day. Pulse and Taptu are for things I browse, where I might want to read a single article from in a week or so, time willing.
I'm getting a bit sick of Google. I still don't know what to do when they kill iGoogle, I like having my mail, (soon to be dead) feeds, weather. and Slashdot on one page, along with the always useful search. I'm guessing I'm going to have to just use Windows 8 tiles instead, which probably isn't Google's preferable action. I'm sure they want me to use Google+ for all this, or something else (Chrome apps) that they will kill in another year, or just can't be bothered to support (like Reader, at this moment).
What really irks me is that Reader is about all I use my Nexus 7 for these days outside of IMDB and stupid searches.

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A patriot must always be ready to defend his country against his government. -edward abbey
Re:Alternatives? by Anonymous Coward · 2013-03-13 14:02 · Score: 1

igoogle is crap.
netvibes.
Re:Alternatives? by jdog-usa · 2013-03-13 14:02 · Score: 1

Amen. I am also dreading the demise of igoogle. For what it's worth, netvibes seems to be similar enough. I'm running both in separate tabs, just to try to wean myself off igoogle. It's not working though. I still go back to the igoogle tab because it feels like home.
Re:Alternatives? by TCPhotography · 2013-03-13 14:08 · Score: 2

I'm moving to protopage, which seems to be working so far.
Re:Alternatives? by detritus. · 2013-03-13 14:13 · Score: 1

Honestly, it sounds liberating to avoid the middle man who can not only censor your feeds but track what you read.
Re:Alternatives? by ClioCJS · 2013-03-13 15:01 · Score: 1

That doesn't sound as bad as I initially thought :) :)

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-Clio
Karma: Bad (mostly from not giving a fuck)
Blog: http://clintjcl.wordpress.com
Re:Alternatives? by LordLimecat · 2013-03-13 15:23 · Score: 5, Informative

Its also famous for making sure you can get your data and get out.
http://www.dataliberation.org/
Any company can drop products. Google has consistently managed to not be a jerk about it.
Re:Alternatives? by b.emile · 2013-03-13 15:42 · Score: 1

Can anyone show me an alternative that isn't getting totally hammered right now? That kind of thing just doesn't inspire confidence...

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Re:Alternatives? by JamesSinton · 2013-03-13 15:42 · Score: 1

I switched to netvibes as soon as it was announced. Netvibes offered a functionally equivalent alternative.
Re:Alternatives? by brillow · 2013-03-13 16:06 · Score: 1

Yeah me too, though honestly there are a million little customizable web portals out there.
Re:Alternatives? by Ol+Biscuitbarrel · 2013-03-13 16:41 · Score: 2

For Chrome I use News Factory. Clicking on the bookmark bar icon gives you a headline and snippet of TFS, and a bigger snippet of TFS on mouseover. Works, I haven't visited the /. front page in months. Those new articles will pile up fast, though, so it's best for choice sites you're keeping tabs on.
Re:Alternatives? by Nostromo21 · 2013-03-13 17:02 · Score: 1

It went out the door soon after "don't be apathetic".
Why couldn't they just shutdown Google+ & we can all go back to the good ol days...? :-/
Re:Alternatives? by Nostromo21 · 2013-03-13 17:05 · Score: 1

Can you give us a URL/port for public access pls? ;)
I bemoan the days I stopped using Usenet...I think everything went downhill after that (& when they allowed non-plaintext email formats)...*sigh*.
Re:Alternatives? by AmiMoJo · 2013-03-13 17:12 · Score: 1

I switched from Brief to Reader last week, after years of putting it of. FUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUU

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const int one = 65536; (Silvermoon, Texture.cs)
SJW, n: "Someone I don't like, and by the way I'm a fuckwit" - AC
Re:Alternatives? by Myopic · 2013-03-13 17:16 · Score: 1

Reader is literally a majority of what I do on the internet. It's the subset of the internet that I choose to follow conveniently laid out on one page with a useful interface. I'll have to move to something else I guess but it sure was convenient. I also used it as the backend to BeyondPod, my podcast manager, which was useful so that I could listen to a podcast either on the web or in BeyondPod and it would all sync up.
I'm not really clear on Google's compulsion with killing projects. Does Reader really cost them so much to run that they need to shut it down? and there is no way to monetize it? Oh well. There are a million feed readers out there, I'll just find another one.
Re:Alternatives? by Myopic · 2013-03-13 17:18 · Score: 4, Funny

Excellent thinking, anonymous coward. This is the same reason you should never fall in love.
Re:Alternatives? by Myopic · 2013-03-13 17:19 · Score: 4, Funny

G+ is awesome. It's a smart way to make a coherent whole out of the Google services. The good old days weren't as good as you remember.
Re:Alternatives? by kwerle · 2013-03-13 18:08 · Score: 4, Insightful

Yeah, I hate companies that let me use something for free and then drop it.
With 3 months notice.
And directions for how to get your data out.
What a bunch of jerks.
Re:Alternatives? by KiwiSurfer · 2013-03-13 18:17 · Score: 1

Last year I was foolish enough to embark on a migration of several mailboxes (several gigs of 10k+ emails each) from Gmail to my self-hosted Dovecot IMAP storage server. I was shocked at the shoddy state of Gmail's IMAP implementation which was (and probably still is) riddled with bugs including bugs where certain actions (like deleting an email) might randomly just not work without throwing an error.
http://weblog.timaltman.com/archive/2008/02/24/gmails-buggy-imap-implementation
http://www.playingwithwire.com/2009/02/some-frustrating-gmail-imap-gimap-bugs/
These bugs made the migration quite difficult since I had to figure out Gmail's quirks and implement some workarounds to faciliate the migration. Prior to this experience I thought all the issues I had with Google's IMAP was due to poor client-side software but after my experience I have realised Google only follows the standards when it suits them and breaks the standards when it suits them. Sounds just like Microsoft doesn't it?
In fact they're no better than Microsoft, Apple, et al when it comes to standands complaince -- and in this case I know Google actually has, by far, the worst IMAP implementation I have ever seen from any leading Mail provider. I'm thankful I no longer use Google (or indeed any propiriety solutions) for anything important -- all important data is now stored on a standards-compliant server running open-source software.
Re:Alternatives? by Zeroedout · 2013-03-13 19:47 · Score: 1

Newsblur has a limit of 64 sites for a free account :( If they were smart enough to let me try out unlimited sites for a month, I would've given it a shot. If I can't take all my feeds with me, I'll just find some other way like local RSS clients for all my devices and manual updating each one with new feeds :(
Also when they say site updates 1x, I assume once a day. What's the point of RSS?
Re:Alternatives? by dunkelfalke · 2013-03-13 19:57 · Score: 3, Insightful

Yes they were. I have closed my g+ account last week, and suddenly picasa became much more pleasant to use.

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"It's such a fine line between stupid and clever" -- David St. Hubbins, Spinal Tap
Re:Alternatives? by bazorg · 2013-03-13 20:23 · Score: 1

well, not a *complete* jerk about it, I'd agree. google.com/ig gets 1 year notice, Google Reader gets 3 months "sunset". AGH.
Re:Alternatives? by BasilBrush · 2013-03-13 20:24 · Score: 1

I don't want a "coherent whole" whose entire purpose is to spy on every aspect of my online life. I used to value Google's services, and get excited when a new one came along. But after they started chaining everything to Google+, I decided enough was enough, deleted my consolidated account, and now avoid Google like the plague.
Re:Alternatives? by BasilBrush · 2013-03-13 20:29 · Score: 1

Justified text? Why? That makes it a little bit harder to read. The only point of justified text is to make the whole page look a more attractive design. But you're not trying to sell it to anyone else. It's a personal page.
Re:Alternatives? by zyzko · 2013-03-13 21:15 · Score: 1

WTF? Netvibes signup now displays an excellent offer of "PREMIUM for ONE $499/month" - what the heck does it do, for $499 I expect a bit more than what Google reader does...
Re:Alternatives? by cockroach2 · 2013-03-13 21:53 · Score: 1

Which alternatives do people like?
I've been using Tiny TIny RSS for a while now and it does everything that I used to use Google reader for except you can host it yourself.
Re:Alternatives? by makomk · 2013-03-13 22:58 · Score: 1

For calendar support apparently they've given up even trying. According to this announcement, they're discontinuing CalDAV support except for "whitelisted developers" and pushing everyone to their proprietary Google Calendar API, including existing developers.
Re:Alternatives? by Inda · 2013-03-13 23:08 · Score: 1

Google makes a shit load of money. Some of it from me. Google running a couple of servers on top of the millions they run now is no skin off their nose. To keep Reader running is chump change, as you 'mericans might say.

The Reader webpage code can be fixed in its state today and everyone would be happy. No more new features. Just let it be.

This is no different to EA shutting down their 'free' gaming servers.

There's no wonder why people are pissed off.

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This post contains benzene, nitrosamines, formaldehyde and hydrogen cyanide.
Re:Alternatives? by goodEvans · 2013-03-13 23:42 · Score: 1

I tried and really didn't like Netvibes, but I have already switch to Awesome New Tab Page, an extension for Chrome. Loads of plugins like a gmail client, weather, RSS readers, all in a grid you can lay out yourself.
Takes a bit of work to copy your setup across computers though - the layout comes across if you're signed in to sync your plugins, but not the RSS feeds themselves.
Re:Alternatives? by Captain+Hook · 2013-03-14 00:52 · Score: 1

My guess is this is another attempt at pushing people to G+

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These comments are my personal opinions and do not necessarily reflect the opinions of the other voices in my head.
Re:Alternatives? by BasilBrush · 2013-03-14 01:10 · Score: 1

If you need to sell your own creations to yourself... that seems bad.
I'm just saying you chose "looks pretty" over "easier to read". It's not a biggie, it just relates to something I'm working on now, so it's a pertinent topic for me.
Re:Alternatives? by vovick · 2013-03-14 02:40 · Score: 1

They do not do it for free. They collect information about my interests in news and articles to pick the ads I'll most likely click. This is a fair tradeoff, not charity.
Re:Alternatives? by Just+Some+Guy · 2013-03-14 03:19 · Score: 1

Yes, they are. They drove almost all the competition out of business and provided an API to encourage RSS readers to hit their servers directly. As a result, nearly all RSS readers are now just interfaces to Google Reader, so when it dies so do most RSS apps.
Optimistically, I hope this sparks a resurgence in innovation and competition between the remaining few aggregation services and applications. Pessimistically, I think Google might have single-handedly just killed RSS.

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Dewey, what part of this looks like authorities should be involved?
Re:Alternatives? by kwerle · 2013-03-14 03:33 · Score: 1

Three responses and yours is the only one that doesn't sound like self-entitled BS.

Yes, they are. They drove almost all the competition out of business and provided an API to encourage RSS readers to hit their servers directly. As a result, nearly all RSS readers are now just interfaces to Google Reader, so when it dies so do most RSS apps.
Optimistically, I hope this sparks a resurgence in innovation and competition between the remaining few aggregation services and applications. Pessimistically, I think Google might have single-handedly just killed RSS.
Good points. I moved to GReader from some other [free] reader whose name I can't even remember. I hope 3 months is long enough for some other reader to pick up the torch. Now to head over to today's thread and see what the options are...
Re:Alternatives? by clintp · 2013-03-14 04:00 · Score: 1

Can anyone show me an alternative that isn't getting totally hammered right now? That kind of thing just doesn't inspire confidence...
If these services are totally hammered now when people are just browsing for an alternative, think of how piss-poor it will be when the service has actual users, and data and... .
*shudder*
Someone will eventually emerge with a usable, scalable service to take in the Reader Refugees. Until amateur hour is over, I'll just sit on the sidelines and wait for that service to emerge.
PS: Fuck you, Google.

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Get off my lawn.
Re:Alternatives? by SoupGuru · 2013-03-14 04:17 · Score: 1

You could almost start wondering if this is a marketing move. Dwindling use in a non-flagship product... say you're discontinuing it and BOM the internet lights up with people talking about how much they love it and can't live without it and how it's the awesomest product ever. Tons of positive buzz. "We listened to our users and have decided to continue Google Reader for the foreseeable future"
Who knows...

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What doesn't kill you only delays the inevitable
Re:Alternatives? by Just+Some+Guy · 2013-03-14 04:36 · Score: 1

Ideally, another service will implement GReader's API so that apps can point at the new URL and keep chugging away as usual. If that doesn't happen then I expect the non-standalone apps to vanish overnight. Maybe that's not such a bad thing, though. Kind of the idea of RSS is that you can fetch all the feeds and easily process them on your own machine. It's not something that inherently needs a proxy, any more than you need to subscribe to a web proxy so that you can browse all your pages through it instead of your browser directly fetching them.

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Dewey, what part of this looks like authorities should be involved?
Re:Alternatives? by Myopic · 2013-03-14 04:55 · Score: 1

Fair enough, but a coherent whole that spies on your life is better than the previous incoherent whole that spied on your life.
Re:Alternatives? by BasilBrush · 2013-03-14 05:11 · Score: 1

No, it's infinitely worse. The more spying they can tie together, the more complete the profile they are building up on you.
Re:Alternatives? by detritus. · 2013-03-14 05:15 · Score: 1

I believe that's if you want analytics data.
Re:Alternatives? by badpazzword · 2013-03-14 09:16 · Score: 2

Psssssst. Picasa is most likely getting the axe in the next cleanup.

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When ideas fail, words become very handy.
Re:Alternatives? by luisdom · 2013-03-14 10:05 · Score: 1

They cancel iGoogle, Google Reader, Photo, I have only picasa and gmail left, and I'm paying them for the storage.
I might as well drop google completly, I use my own domain anyway.
Good email and photo storage, anyone?
Re:Alternatives? by dunkelfalke · 2013-03-14 10:36 · Score: 1

Well, fortunately there are other free image hosting services. And if all else fails, renting webspace is cheap.

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"It's such a fine line between stupid and clever" -- David St. Hubbins, Spinal Tap
Re:Alternatives? by charlievarrick · 2013-03-14 11:12 · Score: 1

The media is a big part of the message. newsbueter + elinks make the webs a noticeably different place.
Re:Alternatives? by Keybounce · 2013-03-15 04:56 · Score: 1

Google, and their behavior, and their dropping of features, is the single best argument ever for refusing to use any sort of cloud-app for any serious business need ever.
Google has killed/dropped/ruined at least the following at different times:
1. Offline documents.
2. Page-layout oriented documents
3. Web-layout oriented documents
(note that they changed how their editor worked, causing problems with both at different times. Right now there is only one choice, and the other doesn't seem to be coming back at all).
4. Support for identifying items not classified into folders.
5. Support for working with folders
(It's there now, but at different times was not)
6. Offline email reading.
(NB: Offline synching has never been an issue. Offline reading now only works in chrome, and only if you want an i-pad style interface)
7. The older, more useful gmail interface.
8. Support for smaller screens in docs and email
(the new layout for both assumes a large screen that can have significant space dedicated to fixed data that isn't what you want to work with.)
Google reader? I stopped using it because google's code changes STANK.
How do you kill off a product that consumes lots of resources and does not return enough ad revenue? Well, lets see. You could focus on making the ad revenue source useful? (*) No? Ok. Make a change in the interface that people hate. People leave. Close it down, citing lack of use.
(*): At one point, GMail's "advertisement line" was 80% from RSS feeds that I could customize, and 20% ads. I actually had my ad blocker turned off for gmail, because I wanted to use that. I was one of the people asking Google to interface my reader RSS list with this.
Google's response? Change it from a user customizable list that was a pain to customizable to a fixed, non-customizable list because no one used it, then change it from 80% RSS to zero RSS (I suddenly only saw pure ads, nothing else -- and then the adblocker went back on).
There are two companies that I won't rely on for any long-term business need.
Google (demonstrates that cloud apps are not reliable), and Apple (EOF? Dead. Java as a full-fledged citizen? Dead. WOF? Effectively dead. Direct to Java? Dead. Etc.)
It's a sad statement that Microsoft is the best friend a business's computer needs has.
Re:Alternatives? by Keybounce · 2013-03-15 04:59 · Score: 1

In fairness, Google's approach (each message has a list of tags) is superior to iMap (each copy of a message exists in exactly one folder).
Frankly, I'm surprised that the "each object (message, document, etc) has a list of locations" hasn't caught on even more. I'd love to know how they manage what appears to be a messy "many/many" relationship system so well.
Re:Alternatives? by jseale · 2013-03-15 16:57 · Score: 1

I'm sure they want me to use Google+ for all this, or something else (Chrome apps) that they will kill in another year, or just can't be bothered to support (like Reader, at this moment)
Google+ is yet something totally different. It's basically a Facebook substitute which, unlike Facebook, seems to act a bit like a news reader (depending on who you +1). If someone were to combine full Facebook functionality (Pulse and Taptu don't count) with an RSS receiver (audio-video enabled, thank you very much), that'd be a coup.
Re:Alternatives? by Omestes · 2013-03-16 03:37 · Score: 1

If someone were to combine full Facebook functionality

I'm guessing I'm the last person on Earth who doesn't want Facebook, or my online "friends", or popularity, or like-minded individuals influencing my content. I see this as a trap, sticking me in a hole where the content I see aligns with what some algorithm thinks I want to see, based on my social group and my perceived point of view. Popular articles are generally meaningless pap, and my Facebook timeline has devolved into a constant stream of memes and "clever" image macros. I want less social in my online life, not more. Or rather, more interesting social, social of people who, while not like minded, are intelligent and mature.

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A patriot must always be ready to defend his country against his government. -edward abbey
Re:Alternatives? by Isarian · 2013-03-21 01:08 · Score: 1

News source? I couldn't find any recent info about this, just speculation from 2011.
Re:Alternatives? by Isarian · 2013-03-21 01:21 · Score: 1

Found it: http://www.slashgear.com/google-picasa-albums-now-redirect-to-google-05272692/

Why? by Anonymous Coward · 2013-03-13 12:46 · Score: 2, Interesting

A decline in usage? I'm pretty sure many people use it, and I personally use it quite a lot. It's a good alternative to client-based RSS readers, and I don't think Google should retire it.

Re:Why? by Anonymous Coward · 2013-03-13 13:30 · Score: 1

Along this line: If no one is using it, why do they feel compelled to provide FOUR MONTHS notice before retiring it?
Re:Why? by ottothecow · 2013-03-13 13:31 · Score: 1

Because they made it hard to get to. It used to have a link up on the top bar and they used promote it.
Now you have to wade through a dropdown menu to get there but can instead get to youtube and the play store with one click. Hell...I go to youtube all of the time and have never clicked that link.

--
Bottles.

Good Replacements? by philshap · 2013-03-13 12:47 · Score: 1

I'm going to miss Google Reader. Anyone know a good replacement? I need browser based reader with IOS support that lets me navigate using the keyboard.

Really what I want is gnus running in a browser, but that's not gonna happen...

Re:Good Replacements? by chazchaz101 · 2013-03-13 13:05 · Score: 1

Netvibes set to reader view appears to look pretty similar from what I can see, but all the RSS reader sites I try seem to be down at the moment. Anyone have experience using it?
Re:Good Replacements? by alen · 2013-03-13 13:09 · Score: 1

check out Feedly
it rides on top of google reader, but i think you can use it without google to save RSS feeds. awesome iOS app as well

Re:WTF Google by Shikaku · 2013-03-13 12:48 · Score: 2

What is gonna happen if you're upset by Google? Are you gonna stop using their products? The money doesn't come from any of their free services, it's the advertisers. You'll be disappointed if you expected nothing else from a free product than to be disappointed when it doesn't bring any more money.

Well Duh by eplawless · 2013-03-13 12:48 · Score: 1

They removed all of the sharing features and tried to replace it with a half-hearted Google+ integration. All of the people I know who used it stopped using it shortly afterwards.

Re:Well Duh by ClioCJS · 2013-03-13 13:36 · Score: 1

I didn't. I simply shared everything to G+. That's really the only purpose G+ had... was for google people to read things that they used to read in google reader, shared by their former sharebros now G+-contacts. So this will actually dent G+ too. They. are. idiots.

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-Clio
Karma: Bad (mostly from not giving a fuck)
Blog: http://clintjcl.wordpress.com

Declining? by countach · 2013-03-13 12:57 · Score: 4, Interesting

When they say it is declining, I wonder if they mean the web site only, or if they include all the apps out there that use it as their storage mechanism. The major loss here is that google reader is the standard. I can use half a dozen different RSS readers and know they all synch with Google Reader, and I can swap between them. Oh, and I know if one day I only have web access, Google's own web interface is pretty nice too.

Don't do it Google! I realize that Reader probably doesn't benefit you much directly, but it's a super important part of "the Google experience".

Re:Declining? by alen · 2013-03-13 13:10 · Score: 1

most people don't subscribe to RSS feeds. too much work
with facebook, G+, twitter and other social crap being used to notify people of blog posts
Re:Declining? by ClioCJS · 2013-03-13 13:37 · Score: 2

So your argument is - it's easier to check 3 sites than 1? In a sense, that is true. In another sense, the way you've phrased it is a bit inaccurate. But in another sense, it's pretty damn annoying the hoops you have to jump through to get twitter and facebook on google reader, and Google never even made rss feeds for G+ posts, which was ridiculous. Can't win. Guess we'll have to check 3 sites forever.

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-Clio
Karma: Bad (mostly from not giving a fuck)
Blog: http://clintjcl.wordpress.com
Re:Declining? by detritus. · 2013-03-13 14:16 · Score: 2

The worst part of this is Facebook nixed RSS for Pages a while back. It really pissed me off as I now have to have an account to keep up on businesses/musicians/organizations I follow that post exclusive or more in-depth content on their FB pages.
Re:Declining? by WiPEOUT · 2013-03-13 14:50 · Score: 1

all the apps out there that use it as their storage mechanism
Maybe this traffic and storage free-riding by other applications has hastened its demise.
Re:Declining? by Pseudonym · 2013-03-13 17:16 · Score: 2

Speak for yourself. Personally, I've already stopped checking two of those sites regularly.

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sub f{($f)=@_;print"$f(q{$f});";}f(q{sub f{($f)=@_;print"$f(q{$f});";}f});
Re:Declining? by Zoxed · 2013-03-14 00:11 · Score: 1

I would go a step further: most people have no idea what a "feed" is, never mind what to do with it ! (present company excepted !)

F*** you by kju · 2013-03-13 13:02 · Score: 1

I was a satisfied user of Bloglines for many years until it was overtaken and crippled by some Internet business. I reluctantly switched to Google Reader which had many shortcomings (e.g. no really persistent "keep unread" feature), but I got used to it because it was the only usable web RSS reader left.

Any now Google is killing this one as well. Thank you very much. Not.

Re:F*** you by ClioCJS · 2013-03-13 13:43 · Score: 2

keep unread? just star it.

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-Clio
Karma: Bad (mostly from not giving a fuck)
Blog: http://clintjcl.wordpress.com
Re:F*** you by BasilBrush · 2013-03-13 20:41 · Score: 1

Persistent unread? WTF? This is why you don't create products by enacting user requests.
"Unread" is a flag meaning you have read something. There should be an option to remove the flag, in case you went into the item by mistake, and want to read later. But an option to say never mark it read, even though you might have read it? That makes no sense.
If you want a flag to mark the item for special consideration, that's a favourite. Or if you want it flagged for some other purpose, ask for that. But persistent unread? That makes no sense.
Re:F*** you by GonHiDi · 2013-03-13 23:52 · Score: 1

Persistent "keep unread" feature (when browsing in expanded view): being able to scroll within a topic (represented as a feed or folder) to an arbitrary entry without—on every visit—having to mark anew as unread every intermediate post of interest, or having to worry about the one month expiry date.
Re:F*** you by BasilBrush · 2013-03-14 01:06 · Score: 1

So it's to compensate for two other bad design choices.

What a shame by sirwired · 2013-03-13 13:03 · Score: 5, Interesting

I realize that Google Reader probably did not make enough money, and/or drive enough traffic, to justify its continued existence. But I spend more time on Google Reader than any other website, by a considerable margin, and I'll miss it.

I'd even pay, if they offered it as a subscription service for a nominal fee.

Re:What a shame by noh8rz10 · 2013-03-13 13:28 · Score: 1

I agree, for most of my usage google reader is my gateway to the internet
Re:What a shame by Anonymous Coward · 2013-03-13 13:33 · Score: 1

mod parent up!
such a nice service as google reader is, people would gladly pay for it
Re:What a shame by JimieRaeWinchester · 2013-03-13 13:39 · Score: 1

I would also pay. I love Google reader, using it throughout the day, every day. With Google retiring my other fave service (iGoogle) I've decided to retire my use of Google, except maybe the search.
Re:What a shame by ftobin · 2013-03-13 14:04 · Score: 1

There is no question I'd pay for Google reader. One of the great properties it has is that searching for subscriptions is extremely easy.
Re:What a shame by aztracker1 · 2013-03-13 16:24 · Score: 2

If someone came up with something similar to iGoogle + Reader for say $10/month would it be worth it to you?

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Michael J. Ryan - tracker1.info
Re:What a shame by Pseudonym · 2013-03-13 17:23 · Score: 1

I don't care about iGoogle, but I'd pay $5/month for just Reader. But it'd have to have all of the features (e.g. full text search, feed discovery), and some of the missing ones (e.g. shared feeds exportable in such a way that feedburner could pick it up).
Bonus marks if it can handle feeds from invite-only Blogger blogs.

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sub f{($f)=@_;print"$f(q{$f});";}f(q{sub f{($f)=@_;print"$f(q{$f});";}f});
Re:What a shame by aztracker1 · 2013-03-13 18:09 · Score: 1

Honestly, been thinking of a basic platform for web-apps... the idea really rooted out when iGoogle's closing was announced.. and with Reader, that would pretty much make it worthwhile to do... I just don't think I could even break even at $5/month/user ... was thinking $10/month for platform, including something like reader, igoogle, and a multi-email imap client. Then having the platform open so people can build/add their own widgets... thinking of NodeJS as the backend service, so widget workers would be .js scripts... limited access to (declared hosts only), with some platform bridges to say misc. providers (not sure about twitter/fb or for that matter g+ etc) that widgets can request access to.

Just a lot of work.. then again, thought about just building the tool, so you can self-host on appfog + mongolab (on their free tier). Mainly to scratch my own itch.. just so bogged down with work, and the side-job that I don't have much free time (with a desire) to code.

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Michael J. Ryan - tracker1.info
Re:What a shame by zyzko · 2013-03-13 21:24 · Score: 1

I can only comment from my point of view so these thoughts are not universal:
Reader, yes, if you make a good one, I will pay $5 a month. I would love to try Newsblur but it is impossible right now. They charge $1 / month for unlimited feeds. If that works (interface is ok, handles 1k+ unread items fine) they have my money.
iGoogle / generic web platform...umm...at least Google and Yahoo have tried this, was not a huge success. I know many did like a custom start page with API but the market is very small. Maybe you could find your niche, myself - if I needed one I would just hack one together which has the things I need.
Multi-email IMAP client: Heck no I'm giving you my passwords, sorry.
Re:What a shame by BonemanPgh · 2013-03-13 23:30 · Score: 1

I, also would pay for it. I paid for NewsGator in the year or two before Google Reader, even though it was terribly slow. I've jumped to Bing from Google when it comes to shopping because Google Shopping is now only for vendors that pay to list. I'm sure the Bing folks are salivating at the opportunity to create a replacement, more power to them.

Grudge by Exitar · 2013-03-13 13:12 · Score: 5, Insightful

"Oh, you didn't use Buzz and you aren't using Google+?
Well, now we're closing something you actually use!
That will show you to belittle our products!"

Re:Grudge by Keybounce · 2013-03-15 05:06 · Score: 1

I actually liked Buzz.
Yes, their launch of it had problems, but they fixed those quickly.
I haven't seen any reason for Google plus, and frankly I'm more scared of it than not.
(Gee: If you use Google plus, you agree to use your real name, and let that be used by your google account for all activities. No more "keybounce".
The real problem here: 3, 5, or 10 different functions, and a requirement that a single account linking all your activities be used for all the different functions. No way to keep them from aggregating my data from separate things together; no way to have two or three different blog or youtube channels for completely unrelated activities. As far as google is concerned, I only have one topic for broadcasting, or only one topic for blogging. Foo.)

Re:WTF Google by ottothecow · 2013-03-13 13:15 · Score: 2

But why wouldn't they like me using this product?

If I use another reader or go to the RSS source myself, I am going to be reading someone else's ads. Those ads might still come from google, but they have to pay a cut to the site owner.

If I use google reader, they insert their own ads into my page AND get to scan my reading habits. seems like a win-win for me, and I can't imagine bandwidth and storage costs are huge (most content remains hosted by the source).

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Bottles.

Is 2005 back? by aurelian · 2013-03-13 13:22 · Score: 4, Interesting

I have just moved back to Linux from OS X, RSS and Google Reader is on the way out, so it looks like I'll be reading mailing lists instead, and I'm posting on Slashdot again.

Re:Is 2005 back? by undeadbill · 2013-03-13 18:02 · Score: 1

In a similar situation myself, except I've decided to migrate all of my services to private/paid resources that I control.
I'm using Vienna reader on OS X, but I'm feeling constrained by the OS X environment. I will probably be switching back to Linux with my next hardware refresh, which means using the new and updated Thunderbird.
My main migration issue in moving off of FB and G+ish are actually my addressbooks and contact data. It is very difficult to find a compatible address book application that makes it easy to store contacts in a format *I* prefer, along with all of their historical contact data as reference. I was able to get away with some of this between FB and Google Contacts, but there isn't anything I'd consider reliable and up to date that integrates with the gui related stuff that is out there. I may actually end up running Mutt along with Rolo to get what I need. Strange how all of the text based apps still end up being more powerful than tools with much larger dev teams and budgets, even years later.

Re:WTF Google by noh8rz10 · 2013-03-13 13:25 · Score: 1

Optimizing resource allocation. For every penny they lose from your alienation, they plan to make x > 1 pennies elsewhere. Sorry, they did the math and you lost :(

Google+ is sort of what killed it by Trepidity · 2013-03-13 13:28 · Score: 5, Insightful

Google Reader used to have some useful features which they actually removed in hopes of pushing people to Google+. Didn't really work, usage declined, now they're killing it.

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Re:Google+ is sort of what killed it by swillden · 2013-03-13 14:57 · Score: 1

What features were removed?

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Re:Google+ is sort of what killed it by Trepidity · 2013-03-13 14:59 · Score: 4, Interesting

It had a bunch of "social" features which were axed in favor of Google+ integration.

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Re:Google+ is sort of what killed it by DerekLyons · 2013-03-13 15:11 · Score: 1

That may be part of it - but RSS in general is also facing stiff competition in the form of Facebook based blogs and feeds.
Re:Google+ is sort of what killed it by Ol+Biscuitbarrel · 2013-03-13 16:43 · Score: 1

Wait until GoogleDouble+Good comes out. You'll unhate it! BTW hand me that spanner.
Re:Google+ is sort of what killed it by icebike · 2013-03-13 16:49 · Score: 5, Informative

And most reader users were happy to see the social Bullshit deleted.
All we ever wanted was a cross platform reader that would sync and organize your feeds.

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Sig Battery depleted. Reverting to safe mode.
Re:Google+ is sort of what killed it by Zeroedout · 2013-03-13 19:39 · Score: 1

All we ever wanted was a cross platform reader that would sync and organize your feeds.
And a new software was born. We shall call it, CPRSO.
Re:Google+ is sort of what killed it by icebike · 2013-03-13 19:42 · Score: 1

College of Physicians and Surgeons of Ontario?

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Sig Battery depleted. Reverting to safe mode.

And with it goes... by Guppy06 · 2013-03-13 13:30 · Score: 4, Interesting

... the only reason I have and log into a Google account.

Re:WTF Google by multi+io · 2013-03-13 13:31 · Score: 1

But why wouldn't they like me using this product?

Maybe because the infrastructure costs more money than comes in via ad revenue, so whenever you're using this product, they incur a loss.

(JFTR, personally I'm an avid GR user, so I'm upset with that decision too)

Comment removed by account_deleted · 2013-03-13 13:31 · Score: 1

Comment removed based on user account deletion

Collateral DoS by gmuslera · 2013-03-13 13:32 · Score: 1

Several of the alternative web rss readers sites (like NewsBlur) are having trouble coping with the amount of people checking for good alternative web based rss readers. I suppose that they will manage to scale with time, but at the moment of the google announcement should had been hard to access.

Re:Collateral DoS by Geeky · 2013-03-13 22:46 · Score: 1

Which is a good indication of how many people are affected by this. Tiny Tiny RSS is showing a simplified page at the moment because it's being hit so hard.
I will be looking for a reader that syncs with Android and web. I have a widget on my phone that I scroll through when I'm have five minutes to spare. I keep the reader window open in a browser all day. I use it all the time.

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Sigs are so 1990s. No way would I be seen dead with one.

Sue them! by Anonymous Coward · 2013-03-13 13:35 · Score: 5, Funny

I say we start a class action suit and demand our money back. In fact, I want at least twice the money I've paid them back...

NewsBlur 100% open-source (web, iOS apps, Android) by dhart · 2013-03-13 13:42 · Score: 3, Informative

From Samuel Clay's twitter posts today - https://twitter.com/NewsBlur. Remember, NewsBlur is 100% open-source (web, iOS apps, Android). Follow @samuelclay on GitHub: http://github.com/samuelclay. Today's not such a hot day in terms of speed, but the next three months will be full throttle. I was preparing to launch the re-design in TWO weeks, not today. I'm spinning up more servers to handle the onslaught.

Here we go again by srichard25 · 2013-03-13 13:45 · Score: 5, Interesting

I had put a lot of time into Google Notebook. I was using it to maintain a very active log of technical documentation. I carefully choose tags to make it easy to find the information I needed quickly, and I spent a lot of time pruning the information to keep it clean. Then Google said they were no longer going to develop Notebook.

I started using Google Reader to catalog technical articles. Once again, putting a lot of time/thought into tagging and notes to make it as useful as possible. Now Google is dropping Reader.

If the product is not making enough money from data/ads, then at least give people the opportunity to pay for it. I would gladly pay for Notebook and/or Reader!

Should I put the time and effort into gmail? Is that the next Google product to just disappear?? After being burnt twice, I will be thinking carefully before putting a lot of effort into a free Google product.

Re:Here we go again by glwtta · 2013-03-13 16:29 · Score: 5, Insightful

Oh, calm down. All this means is that you have to export your stuff, and import into a different, nearly identical service.

What do you want them to do, anyway? Swear a blood-oath that once they start up a service, they will continue with it forever?

If they don't think it makes sense to commit the resources to maintain it, then it's certainly not going to make sense to maintain a paid version - not everything is about revenue.

You act like this is some kind of galling defect in Google's collective moral fibre - some things don't stick, it happens.

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sic transit gloria mundi
Re:Here we go again by egr · 2013-03-13 23:00 · Score: 1

I don't trust anyone. Online storage, notes, bookmarks, emails, calendars, bookmarks sync. Better to run on my own server and I do where I can. It takes time and a bit of money to setup, but in my opinion it is worth it.
Re:Here we go again by dehole · 2013-03-14 02:50 · Score: 1

Good for you. I imagine your support for a web-based google product, prevents a decent non-web based solution from forming. You should never depend on something you don't have control over.
That's why I think Windows OS piracy is as popular as it is, they don't terribly mind you pirating their platform, as long as you keep using their platform. If you couldn't use a pirated Windows OS, then you'd either pay for it, or switch to linux. They don't want you to switch to linux, so the pirated versions are available.
Re:Here we go again by ceoyoyo · 2013-03-14 03:06 · Score: 1

Google is just doing their part to teach everyone the dangers of the cloud. They seem to have gotten through to you. Instead of migrating your stuff to some other web service, as glwtta suggests, set up something of your own.

The cloud is the future! by Anonymous Coward · 2013-03-13 13:49 · Score: 5, Insightful

Google pretty much demonstrates the iron-cast reason why you shouldn't move your apps to the cloud every time they have another round of "cleaning."

Re:The cloud is the future! by Confusador · 2013-03-13 22:00 · Score: 1

In general I'd agree, but RSS readers essentially don't work without the cloud. The only thing that is "my" data in Reader is a list of URLs. Without pulling down content from elsewhere, that's essentially useless to me. That's also why it's so easy to migrate: I can import that list into a number of other services and applications that will do the same thing.

RSS isn't dead, but decent apps? by Anonymous Coward · 2013-03-13 13:50 · Score: 1

I never upgraded to Google Reader because I am an old faithful clinging to my desktop apps (I use and love Vienna on OS X). I'm not surprised they're shutting it down - it again re-iterates why it is better to be in control of your own data!!

That said, I have tried repeatedly to find an iPad app that mimics Vienna's behaviour and almost all iPad apps want to use Google Reader. Obviously sync of reads would be great, but I'd even take non-synced if there was actually a decent iPad app that could load an XML file of RSS feeds.

There is a huge hole for a iPhone/iPad/OS X/(even web-based) syncing RSS reader. Does NetNewsWire do it? Last time I tried their desktop app I didn't really like it but I still have a thirst for RSS and this whole google story has just re-iterated that for me.

Re:RSS isn't dead, but decent apps? by HaroldBakker · 2013-03-13 18:41 · Score: 1

NNW syncs to Google Reader not to anything else. It used to have ftp and bloglines syncing but that was axed a long time ago

Re:WTF Google by 93+Escort+Wagon · 2013-03-13 13:51 · Score: 5, Interesting

No, based on events surrounding their last couple "retirements", it's pretty obvious they're attempting to force people to start using Google+ by retiring most stuff that's external to that product. It doesn't really seem to be working, but it's hard to interpret the tea leaves in any other manner.

For such a huge company they sure are looking desperate...

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#DeleteChrome

Where the fuck are the APIs? by Phil+Urich · 2013-03-13 13:52 · Score: 4, Insightful

Why the hell does TheOldReader not have an API? "We're working on an iOS app" just doesn't cut it for the kind of crazy weirdos (like me) that use Google Reader.

I mean, hell, even on my Nokia N9---a platform stabbed and left to die bleeding by the side of the road---there are multiple Google Reader syncing RSS clients. That's what I want Google Reader for, as a central sync repository for my RSS feed reading (some on a desktop at home, some on a desktop at work, some on a tablet, some on a phone, some on my e-reader, etc etc). If sites like TheOldReader are just a website and, at best, an app or two they write themselves for a few of the largest platforms then they're nearly as useless to me as Google Reader will soon be.

NewsBlur seems slightly better in that their apps for the mainstream platforms already exist, but that's still extremely weak compared to the flexibility of interface and location that the current Google Reader + APIs have allowed for.

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I remember sigs. Oh, a simpler time!

Re:Where the fuck are the APIs? by Baki · 2013-03-13 21:03 · Score: 4, Interesting

Tiny Tiny RSS is an open source aggregator that you can host yourself and offers an API and has two android clients (don't know about iphone). I use it and think it is a worthy replacement for google reader.

Feedly by Mitaphane · 2013-03-13 14:00 · Score: 4, Interesting

Feedly seems to be the best alternative if you've become accustomed to using Google Reader. It synchronizes itself with Google Reader (or it will until July). It even has some the same keyboard shortcuts. Transitioning is seamless; it uses Google's OAuth to gain access to your Google account and pull in all your feeds & tags.

It looks like the app is a little slow right now as they are dealing with the surge in demand.

http://blog.feedly.com/2013/03/14/google-reader/

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-Shawn "If the Name Don't Rhyme It Ain't Mine" Conn

Re:Feedly by Captain+Hook · 2013-03-14 01:10 · Score: 2

Requires Google OAuth to login, needs a firefox plugin just to display the content.

Isn't that a little bit of overkill just to provide an RSS feed?

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These comments are my personal opinions and do not necessarily reflect the opinions of the other voices in my head.
Re:Feedly by nashv · 2013-03-14 09:31 · Score: 1

Yep, just transition to Feedly. No problems no fuss. Plus, it is truly cross platform since it has browser extensions for all major browsers, a Chrome app, iOS app, and an Android app.
I think I am covered.

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Entia non sunt multiplicanda praeter necessitatem.

Re:NewsBlur 100% open-source (web, iOS apps, Andro by Anonymous Coward · 2013-03-13 14:10 · Score: 1

They just added a "Import from Reader" Dialog - smart ...

Comment removed by account_deleted · 2013-03-13 14:19 · Score: 1

Comment removed based on user account deletion

It will break a lot of RSS readers by djh2400 · 2013-03-13 14:32 · Score: 5, Interesting

Immediately after seeing the original post from the Google Reader blog, I started looking for a solution. It seems that practically every RSS program or service out there actually uses Google Reader as a centralized syncing platform.

I read news through RSS feeds at different computers throughout the day and on different OSes. The ability for a service to synchronize between all the places I access the feeds is paramount in a replacement. Thus, all those services which use Google Reader for syncing purposes will break once Google shuts down Reader, so, sadly, they are not a viable option as things stand right now.

I do like some of the alternatives posted by other commenters; I'll check out some of them when I have the time. I also signed the petition in one of the first comments above — it may have no effect, but it's worth trying, I suppose.

Re:It will break a lot of RSS readers by Bremic · 2013-03-13 16:19 · Score: 5, Interesting

I found this funny. There are Reader Clients for both iOS and Android that are rated as top apps. This means there must have been huge numbers of downloads of those apps, and large numbers of people using them - all requiring Google Reader.
Yet Google Reader has few users... this just doesn't add up.
It strikes me this is purely a Google+ selling point, and one that I suspect isn't going to work.
Re:It will break a lot of RSS readers by djh2400 · 2013-03-14 05:46 · Score: 1

I tend to agree with your conjecture that this is an effort to drive more people to G+. My Google account is old enough that I do not belong to G+. I actually opted in, saw it was something I wouldn't care to use, and then promptly opted out (later on they stopped the whole opt-out thing and now they bug me about signing up at every opportunity). So, anyway, my point is that I don't really know much about it, as I never use it.
What I'm getting at is, if they're trying to move people over the G+ by closing Reader, then does this mean that G+ has a promising replacement for Reader? If it does AND some of the listed alternatives do not live up to expectations, then perhaps G+ may be worth considering even if I use it for nothing but a feed reader... But I'm not about to sign up until I can confirm it has what I would want.

Re:WTF Google by Anonymous Coward · 2013-03-13 14:49 · Score: 2, Insightful

You're probably right about the revenue, but you don't consider just how much free data Google can harvest from the people who use Google Reader. I think that no online behavior of mine - and I'm including searches - reveals as much about my priorities and interests as how I curate my RSS, and what articles I click on. I've been gifting all this info to Google, in exchange for a tiny increase in their server load from sending me text. I don't think they are really getting such a bad deal from this.

sigh by barlevg · 2013-03-13 14:52 · Score: 1

Anyone know of an RSS feed reader for Android besides Google Reader that handles mouseover text (aka alt text)?

Re:sigh by barlevg · 2013-03-13 23:28 · Score: 1

xkcd is actually prominent enough as to not be an issue, since it turns out there's at least one feed that includes the alt text below the image. The problem is the dozen or so OTHER webcomics I read that use alt text. It would be one thing if alt text were supported by a mobile web browser--I'm fine with clicking through--but I haven't been able to find a single such browser.
Re:sigh by Newander · 2013-03-14 04:41 · Score: 1

Dinosaur Comics too.

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Jesus saves and takes half damage.

Local alternatives? by darkfeline · 2013-03-13 15:20 · Score: 2

Google Reader was the last web app I use, and Google decided to cement the reason why I moved to local apps in the first place. So with Google finally abandoning me and fellow Reader users, what Linux replacements are there? I'm trying out Liferea at the moment, going to see how that works out.

Sayonara Google, it's been fun.

Re:Local alternatives? by zakkie · 2013-03-13 19:24 · Score: 1

Liferea is inadequate.
Re:Local alternatives? by Cid+Highwind · 2013-03-14 08:46 · Score: 1

Reading the same set of feeds from more than one device.
Doubly inadequate when at least one of the devices is not a Linux box with all the Gnome libraries installed.

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0 1 - just my two bits

Re:NewsBlur 100% open-source (web, iOS apps, Andro by Anonymous Coward · 2013-03-13 15:27 · Score: 1

Yeah, and critical features like having more than 64 feeds and full text view are premium only.

They kill Reader we kill Google+ by Anonymous Coward · 2013-03-13 15:32 · Score: 5, Insightful

I just went and deleted my Google+ account in protest of this and I would suggest that others do also. You are given an opportunity to tell Google why you are leaving Google+ and it seems to me there is no better place to sound off on this incredibly stupid decision to kill Reader.

Re:They kill Reader we kill Google+ by ntropia · 2013-03-13 18:32 · Score: 1

Please tell us why you deleted your account: "Google Reader, that's why".
Re:They kill Reader we kill Google+ by Clarious · 2013-03-13 20:19 · Score: 1

Ditto.
I removed all 'social' related stuff in my google account. While it is unlikely to be able to change the decision, at least Google won't get my information anymore. Now to find a good email service...

Seriously? by Nostromo21 · 2013-03-13 15:38 · Score: 1

TF? So does this mean my droid gReader 3rd party app will stop working July 1 as well? i.e. this is a Google complete back-end shutdown...?
'Currents' looks like a piss-poor replacement if I can't even get local top newspaper feeds...seriously Google??? :-/

Re:Seriously? by Geeky · 2013-03-14 00:36 · Score: 1

On my desktop and my phone? Nope, looks like Currents is tablet/smartphone only.

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Sigs are so 1990s. No way would I be seen dead with one.

In the beginning... by Anonymous Coward · 2013-03-13 15:38 · Score: 1

http://googleblog.blogspot.in/2005/10/feed-world.html

And people told me not to worry about THE CLOUD by lordandrei · 2013-03-13 15:39 · Score: 1

See all my data management is taken care of for me. It's just like giving your valuables to a maid to throw down a disposal. Finding an iOS reader that doesn't require a Google Reader account is nigh impossible.

Re:And people told me not to worry about THE CLOUD by Myopic · 2013-03-13 17:49 · Score: 2

Yes. It is taken care of for you. And you can take it with you to a new service easily. What more could you ask?
Re:And people told me not to worry about THE CLOUD by Anonymous Coward · 2013-03-13 18:25 · Score: 1

This, by doing things like this, google is convincing a lot of users that the cloud is not reliable. One of the reason for using google reader rather than something else was : "it's google, it's not going anywhere", well, thanks for the lesson google, so long.
Re:And people told me not to worry about THE CLOUD by MistrBlank · 2013-03-14 00:56 · Score: 1

Wait until they decide that gmail is in decline. Personally I'm moving out now.

The nightmare of cloud service by Anonymous Coward · 2013-03-13 15:42 · Score: 5, Insightful

With everything being in the cloud, what if the cloud is gone someday. The google reader is just an example here.
If google reader is just a desktop app, we can happily conitnue to use it even it is abandoned.
But if it is in the cloud, we are screwed.

Re:The nightmare of cloud service by the_olo · 2013-03-13 22:28 · Score: 1

With everything being in the cloud, what if the cloud is gone someday. The google reader is just an example here. If google reader is just a desktop app, we can happily conitnue to use it even it is abandoned. But if it is in the cloud, we are screwed.
If "the cloud" (the whole of it) is gone someday, there also won't be any RSS/ATOM feeds left for you to use your desktop app with.
My point is, "the cloud" being gone isn't very probable - some services like Google Reader may disappear, but if they are popular, others will immediately spot the opportunity to take their place (like presently feedly.com, netvibes.com or newsblur.com), possibly even improving upon these on their way out.
Re:The nightmare of cloud service by MistrBlank · 2013-03-14 00:54 · Score: 1

That's his point. Reader is a cloud service and he's losing his data and access to the "application" that google provided. I think you'll be hard pressed to find a service that will support the export of google reader data. Even if he goes to another service, it could happen there too.
However if it were a desktop app, he could just go on like it never happened.
Personally I haven't found a reader app that synchronizes what I've read in my feeds across devices, recommends new feeds from a large search database, allows me to group feeds and read entire groups, or access the service from external apps and devices.
Re:The nightmare of cloud service by the_olo · 2013-03-15 00:19 · Score: 1
I think you'll be hard pressed to find a service that will support the export of google reader data.
I've tried feedly, and it integrates on-line with Google authentication, asking access to my Reader data:

feedly is requesting permission to:
- View basic information about your account
- Manage your data in Google Reader
Perform these operations when I'm not using the application
Then it has seamlessly and practically instantly imported all my feeds, categorized, and all starred items.

Obviously just a sugar coating excuse by Junta · 2013-03-13 15:48 · Score: 4, Insightful

The plain and simple truth is that Facebook style usage is more valuable or at least perceived as more valuable. RSS consumption is too passive by nature. Even when it did have the ability to 'share' items with friends (before trying to force those people over to Google plus), comments and notes were rare and an existing article was pretty much required before any discussion would happen (yes, you could create a note and share without an article attached, but the UI design didn't really encourage that usage. Now with even that removed, Google doesn't extract a lot of value from the users. It is a respectable implementation, but not a profitable one.

I personally plan to explore self-hosted solutions. I intended to when google reader dropped the share feature, but was too lazy and it still worked fine as a standalone reader.

--
XML is like violence. If it doesn't solve the problem, use more.

Re:Obviously just a sugar coating excuse by Pentium100 · 2013-03-13 16:47 · Score: 1

I will also explore self-hosted solutions. I started using Google Reader so that I could read the same fees from multiple computers without losing the "read" marks. I guess a self-hosted solution will be just as useful.
TT RSS looks interesting, I will try it out first, unless someone suggest something else.

Exit Newsblur, enter trusty 'ol Thunderbird by smegfault · 2013-03-13 15:49 · Score: 4, Informative

After messing around for an hour trying NewsBlur to work, I exported my RSS data from Google Reader and imported it to Thunderbird. Bye bye Google Reader.

Re:Exit Newsblur, enter trusty 'ol Thunderbird by Ruach · 2013-03-14 07:52 · Score: 1

What about starred items?
Re:Exit Newsblur, enter trusty 'ol Thunderbird by smegfault · 2013-03-14 11:46 · Score: 1

You mean; did the export/import retain them in Thunderbird? Not sure, I never star items, I bookmark interesting stuff I want to keep around, or I webcite really, really interesting stuff I want to keep. YMMV.
Re:Exit Newsblur, enter trusty 'ol Thunderbird by smegfault · 2013-03-14 17:34 · Score: 1

The XML file has all the original RSS feeds like "http://rss.slashdot.org/Slashdot/slashdot"; so I'm not sure what you're trying to say.
Re:Exit Newsblur, enter trusty 'ol Thunderbird by smegfault · 2013-03-14 17:35 · Score: 1

The Google takeout .zip file has a starred.json file, incidentally. Not sure if you could make that work with Thunderbird.

Best in class by ftobin · 2013-03-13 16:06 · Score: 5, Insightful

It's one thing to shut down a product that is didn't make it out of the gate (e.g., Buzz), but it's another to shut down a product that is considered to be the premier product in its space.

I've been using Google products for a long time, and have understood most of their shutdowns. I used to think that as long as the service wasn't "experimental", it'd stick around. But going forward, I have 0 trust, since obviously even having the #1 product isn't enough.

Re:Best in class by hmmm · 2013-03-13 21:14 · Score: 1

This. This is the biggest thing for me. It's not like this was a niche product, Google had built _the_ best RSS reader and it in turn had become the core infrastructure for many products and services. I use Reader on the web, I use it on my Mac, I use it on my phone. I'm not naive, but I guess I expected that only super-niche products would ever be shut down by Google. I'm disgusted, this will make me much more wary of using any Internet service in the future, particularly one from Google.

Rain from the cloud by jtownatpunk.net · 2013-03-13 16:22 · Score: 4, Insightful

This kind of thing is one of the reasons I made that Marge Simpson murmur when my last company's head of IT declared that we were Googleizing. Part of Google's pitch is to list the huge number of apps and tools they have available. Trouble is, you can deeply integrate those apps into your company's procedures, then Google decides to clean house and discontinue something that's become critical to your company and there's not a damn thing you can do about it.

Focus by slasho81 · 2013-03-13 17:04 · Score: 1

One of their reasons to retire GR is to focus their efforts. No effort has gone into GR for the last few years. Why not just keep it? The cost is nil.

Re:Focus by jader3rd · 2013-03-13 17:22 · Score: 1

Why not just keep it? The cost is nil.
I'm pretty sure money goes into paying for electricity and replacing the backend disks as they die.

Confused by jaronc · 2013-03-13 17:29 · Score: 1

I've used Google Reader for so long I don't even think I remember how to use individual websites. We used to use....they were called bookmarks weren't they?

Re:Confused by aled · 2013-03-13 17:38 · Score: 1

Me neither. Can you tell me which was the option to keep my reading synchronized between all my devices?

--

"I think this line is mostly filler"
Re:Confused by gitano_dbs · 2013-03-14 01:07 · Score: 1

Me neither. Can you tell me which was the option to keep my reading synchronized between all my devices?
For bookmarks, tabs and history syncing can use Xmarks http://www.xmarks.com/ i use for sync Linux, Windows and Android web browsers

Oh, statistics... by slasho81 · 2013-03-13 17:39 · Score: 3, Insightful

Statistics as always ruin everything.

So usage is declining. But who continues to use Google Reader? Everyone who leads the social web, as evident by this story exploding everywhere. Google retiring Reader got more press than any Google innovation got in years.

Maybe Google should use the statistics of attention and rage rather than usage for deciding this one.

With all the messages asking about replacements... by mark-t · 2013-03-13 18:02 · Score: 1

I don't understand why they think that usage is declining.

It's not like there's apparently an abundance of alternatives, or else I wouldn't be seeing so many people here asking for one.

So what's really going on, exactly?

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File under 'M' for 'Manic ranting'

Re:NewsBlur 100% open-source (web, iOS apps, Andro by dhart · 2013-03-13 18:09 · Score: 1

Host your own if you don't like the fee. How is this model any different from wordpress.org/.com? Relying on "free" services where the provider has no contractual obligations is the very basis of the problem with Google shitcanning Reader without giving users the *choice* to move to a paid model or, heaven forbid, open sourcing the code. Oh right, Google's core platform code is proprietary, my bad for thinking that they could eat their own dogfood and at least provide the *option* for users to re-deploy Google products (or their open-sourced anaogues) on Google's own AppEngine platform.

Re:People actually use RSS? by HaroldBakker · 2013-03-13 18:47 · Score: 1

Apparantly your time is frree. For most other people this is not true.

Don't rely on third parties by Celarent+Darii · 2013-03-13 18:55 · Score: 2, Interesting

Seriously guys, don't rely on third parties. If something is important to you, make it yourself!

I thought all serious slashdotters used GNUS for RSS feeds. Works great and you can customize it.

The outrage by slasho81 · 2013-03-13 19:02 · Score: 5, Insightful

I've seen so many "Fuck you Google" said today I'm beginning to think Google has officially transitioned into being the new Microsoft.

Re:The outrage by BasilBrush · 2013-03-13 20:49 · Score: 1

That's been my opinion the last coupe of years.

Hitler finds out... by illestov · 2013-03-13 19:52 · Score: 1

Hitler finds out ..

sad by VJrabauke · 2013-03-13 20:03 · Score: 1

i'm giving http://feedafever.com/ a chance

Re:NewsBlur 100% open-source (web, iOS apps, Andro by zyzko · 2013-03-13 20:11 · Score: 1

Does it handle having hundreds of unread articles well? I have a "gaming" folder which receives about 1000 new posts every week, and I scroll them through quickly on weekends, actually reading maybe 5-10 articles, the rest - headlines are enough. Reader handles this fine and doesn't crash the browser.

The features that I love in Google Reader are:

1) Keeps unread messages nicely, I can come back to site monthly or hourly, doesn't matter. Even some offline readers I tried in the past screw this up...
2) No crap, just the RSS
3) Free (although I pay actual money to Google in form of storage space, please let me pay to you also to keep reader alive, if just in maintenance mode)

Many people seem to use Reader also as their central hub for feeds, and use an app on Android/iPhone/WP to access it - for me only the web is important, but others seem to like the API and 3rd party readers too.

Re:WTF Google by weber · 2013-03-13 20:19 · Score: 1

I spend around a third of my time in China, and they block Google+ but not Reader, so this is most unfortunate. I'm installing thunderbird now, but it was nice to have something on the web because I didn't need to install a dedicated program on multiple computers and OS's (Work: Windows, at home: 3 pc's and 2 tablets).

I have an alternative by aaron987 · 2013-03-13 20:27 · Score: 1

I was unhappy with Google Reader, so I built my own web-based RSS reader called Feed Fiend (http://feedfiend.com). It is simple, without all the useless bells and whistles-- just news. It also has a one-click subscribe tool that makes it easy to find new feeds. So yes, this is my own site, and yes, I do plan to make money from it. But if you want an alternative, it is available. I have been up all night telling people about it, because I sincerely believe it is a great alternative. Go give it a try. Aaron Wright FeedFiend.com

Re:I have an alternative by Snwbeast · 2013-03-14 00:32 · Score: 1

I appreciate the work you put into this but how about some screen shots or tour of the site without me having to create an account?

Re:NewsBlur 100% open-source (web, iOS apps, Andro by zyzko · 2013-03-13 20:33 · Score: 1

Which just returns an error message after giving them access to your feeds on Google. Yeah, they are probably being slashdotted right now and it will go away, but using a service which fails right at signup - umm....no thanks.

Charge a few dollars for the service!!!! by Tim12s · 2013-03-13 20:38 · Score: 1

For fk sakes - Why don't they try and make some of the services charged before retiring them! Even $10 a year from each member might be significant enough to run the platform.

Guys, I got this. by Logic+and+Reason · 2013-03-13 20:38 · Score: 2

I highly recommend turning your RSS items into emails. You can then read them from any IMAP client (or via webmail), and you get synchronization for free.

There's at least one web-based service that'll do this for you (feed2mail), but I've had good success with running feed2imap as a cron job.

(Disclaimer: I wrote my own feed2imap-like tool, which is what I'm actually using now. It's not ready for public consumption, though.)

Re:WTF Google by bickerdyke · 2013-03-13 20:58 · Score: 3, Insightful

No, based on events surrounding their last couple "retirements", it's pretty obvious they're attempting to force people to start using Google+ by retiring most stuff that's external to that product.

Wouldn't that require that google+ at least had half of the features of the products they kill?

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bickerdyke

NewsBlur Slashdotted by Chrisq · 2013-03-13 21:08 · Score: 1

NewsBlur seems to be slashdotted at the moment

Re:NewsBlur 100% open-source (web, iOS apps, Andro by emj · 2013-03-13 22:07 · Score: 1

Newsblur works great, I just imported RSS feeds from reader and it worked great. Reader is generally more polished, but Newsblur is a little less crufty.

Lots of alternatives by water-and-sewer · 2013-03-13 22:09 · Score: 1

I can understand the disappointment, but why do so many nerds feel like they're absolutely screwed as a result? There are a huge number of alternatives. Any iOS or Android device has more RSS-reader apps than you can shake a stick at (I use RSSDemon and like it). Firefox has their "live bookmarks," the Opera browser handles RSS feeds expertly, Linux users have akregator and a couple of others. If you're a nerd with a website, install rawdog and create your own reader (I made one at http://www.therandymon.com/rawdogger.html with the feeds I like to read) or try something like CURN (http://therandymon.com/content/view/188/98/, a small java app you can run on your own machine and that can either create an HTML feed for you or email the results anywhere you want them.

I love RSS and use it extensively, on many platforms. I never quite got Google Reader but for me it wasn't as good as a dedicated app. The fact that GoogleReader is going down the tubes doesn't mean the end of civilization, people: there are a lot of alternatives. Maybe nothing quite the same (yet!) but soon. And anyway, if it was so good, there's a niche open now for an enterprising geek to whip up something similar and make some money. Hopefully that geek will create something that doesn't include all that social-networky horsecrap.

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If this were Usenet, I'd killfile the lot of you.

Re:Lots of alternatives by ExKoopaTroopa · 2013-03-14 00:03 · Score: 1

Fast, lean, and syncs seamlessly accross all your devices. That's all you need for a killer app

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Don't Tell Me What I Can't Do!

Re:NewsBlur 100% open-source (web, iOS apps, Andro by zyzko · 2013-03-13 22:09 · Score: 1

Burned by this too. They advertise 64 feeds, but it is actually "12 sites". Which is not told before you get a nag screen telling that you have to disable some of your feeds because the limit is "12 sites".

I will gladly pay for a good service, but please don't use deceptive terms like this, it just makes you jerks.

Re:NewsBlur 100% open-source (web, iOS apps, Andro by zyzko · 2013-03-13 22:13 · Score: 1

I got it working by manually exporting my feed subscriptions from Google Takeout. The real bummer came when my pretty moderate use (33 feeds) does not fit in to their "64 feeds" policy which only allows "12 sites". As I said in another comment - I will gladly pay for a good service. But this kind of double-talk makes me wonder what else they are not saying directly and openly.

Re:WTF Google by Anonymous Coward · 2013-03-13 22:51 · Score: 1

Agreed.

On a statistically negligible sample of people I discussed this with, I've noticed that Google Reader is used exclusively by power users.

The power users bring in hardly any revenue, because they use AdBlock and are more bullshit-resistant in general.

More petitions by Master+Of+Ninja · 2013-03-13 23:11 · Score: 1

I like everyone else is upset at this. One of the best Google services shut down - obviously their target audience is not me. There just isn't a good replacement for a web-based service such as this (see all the points previously stated) making an Android/iOS app a poor fit, and even standalone desktop applications poor (especially the go away for a few days and all the feeds are picked up part).

I am at the point that I will happily close my Google Plus account (don't really use it) as a protest vote if someone is organising something like this (Occupy Google Plus anyone?)

I hope everyone can sign one of the 3 petitions:
* Whitehouse - https://petitions.whitehouse.gov/petition/officially-request-behalf-citizens-united-states-google-reverse-its-decision-shut-down-reader/VRZTd72L
* Change.org #1 - https://www.change.org/petitions/google-keep-google-reader-running
* Change.org #2 - http://www.change.org/petitions/google-please-don-t-kill-google-reader

:-(

Comment removed by account_deleted · 2013-03-13 23:48 · Score: 1

Comment removed based on user account deletion

False News by jsbhatia · 2013-03-13 23:48 · Score: 2

I am a Google Reader and I am not retiring anytime soon.

Comment removed by account_deleted · 2013-03-13 23:50 · Score: 1

Comment removed based on user account deletion

They are even implementing the Reader API by tulimulta · 2013-03-13 23:56 · Score: 1

They have prepared for this by coding a clone of Google Reader, even implementing the API (for others to use as well). This should be great news for other apps depending on Google Reader. http://blog.feedly.com/2013/03/14/google-reader/ I've been a Feedly user for many years, give it a shot, it's great!

Clumsy move by wheelbarrio · 2013-03-14 00:30 · Score: 4, Insightful

I accept that Google knows their own metrics and usage is declining, but am surprised no-one in marketing asked - what *kind* of users are the ones who still use Reader? Because the answer is - evangelizers. Sophisticated technology users who find RSS incredibly useful. More broadly, folks that love their technology, and many who see Google as a great technology company. This is in practice, if not intent, a narrow-beam fuck you to those folks. Oops.

Re:Clumsy move by McKing · 2013-03-14 02:09 · Score: 1

This * 1000.

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If only "common" sense was actually that common...
Re:Clumsy move by elton247 · 2013-03-16 08:31 · Score: 1

Hey GOOGLE! Its not the Quantity, its the Quality!

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How strange it is to be anything at all

Re:People actually use RSS? by MistrBlank · 2013-03-14 00:30 · Score: 1

Uh, dipshit, we're still there the last time I looked at my cell phone bill. Personally I don't like filtering through all the ads and images and bullshit when I can aggregate headlines from multiple sites and read only what I want to read.

Re:kill google+ by MistrBlank · 2013-03-14 00:53 · Score: 1

I'm about ready to kill my gmail account.

So typical of Google by walterbyrd · 2013-03-14 01:42 · Score: 2

IMO: this is a real problem with using any google service, other than the search engine.

You never know when Google is going to pull the rug out from under you. Google does this sort of thing all the time. How can we trust any service from Google?

Why not? by Comboman · 2013-03-14 01:51 · Score: 1

Corporations have more effect over our everyday lives than the government, so why shouldn't we petition them? Sure not every issue is of the same level of importance, but there's room for lots of petitions on Change.org so why not let everyone have their say?

By the way, it seems whiny and self-entitled to complain about petitions you don't personally agree with. Just find another petition you do want to support.

--
Support Right To Repair Legislation.

Guess they want to make more money by Nukenbar · 2013-03-14 01:52 · Score: 1

It is too bad they are retiring igoogle and google reader, the two things I have as my start pages because they work so well without interruptions.

But I guess those interruptions is how google makes money and they want to force users onto those other platforms.

Re:Post your trends, let's show how heavy we use i by McKing · 2013-03-14 02:08 · Score: 1

From your 88 subscriptions, over the last 30 days you read 8,594 items, clicked 518 items, starred 1 items, and emailed 0 items.
Since March 28, 2012 you have read a total of 92,192 items.

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If only "common" sense was actually that common...

Comment removed by account_deleted · 2013-03-14 02:25 · Score: 1

Comment removed based on user account deletion

Worst Tribute Ever. by Comboman · 2013-03-14 02:43 · Score: 1

I can't think of a worse possible tribute to open web supporter and RSS pioneer Aaron Swartz than this. Nice one Google, why don't you take a shit on his grave while you're at it.

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Support Right To Repair Legislation.

List of alternatives... by frank_adrian314159 · 2013-03-14 02:43 · Score: 1

... here

So far, Feedly seems to work fine for me.

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That is all.

Re:WTF Google by Cid+Highwind · 2013-03-14 02:46 · Score: 1

Wouldn't that require that google+ at least had half of the features of the products they kill?

Apparently it doesn't. That's why the blatant G+ railroading is pissing off so many users.

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0 1 - just my two bits

Re:WTF Google by frank_adrian314159 · 2013-03-14 02:51 · Score: 1

It's pretty obvious they're attempting to force people to start using Google+ by retiring most stuff that's external to that product.

Well, maybe I'm just not getting it, but how would you "use Google+" to replace the functionality of Google Reader? Or are blogs so passe that you're supposed to put everything in a Google+ page or feed item? I really don't get this.

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That is all.

Re:WTF Google by LihTox · 2013-03-14 03:25 · Score: 1

What is gonna happen if you're upset by Google? Are you gonna stop using their products? The money doesn't come from any of their free services, it's the advertisers. You'll be disappointed if you expected nothing else from a free product than to be disappointed when it doesn't bring any more money.

Time to add Google Ads to your Adblock filter (if you haven't already) :)

Re:Take my money by neminem · 2013-03-14 03:49 · Score: 1

That's a good point. I'd pay a few dollars a year. Heck, I might even pay a few dollars a month. There really aren't any other rss feeds anywhere near as great as Reader is. I transitioned to Reader a year or so ago from a much worse system, when it started going from merely mediocre to downright terrible... I couldn't believe it'd taken me that long. RIP Reader. Long live nobody, they all suck compared to Reader.

Re:WTF Google by luisdom · 2013-03-14 10:13 · Score: 1

But sincerly, how can I use Google+ as a "news reader" as I use Google Reader? Organized and so on?
I don't mind switching to G+ if I can get some of the functionality...

Haven't found another service with feed history. by Ferzelic · 2013-03-14 13:51 · Score: 1

One feature that Reader has, and no other service I've found can match, is historical feed data.

When I discover a new podcast, I like to go back and listen to their old episodes. Reader makes this possible and easy; I can go back and look at very old articles that aren't even listed in the live feed any more.

For example, This American Life only keeps the latest three episodes in their feed; but using Reader, I can go back an arbitrary distance into the past. (I'm sure there's a limit to the history somewhere, but I'm not inclined to go looking for it.) I assume Reader is taking advantage of Google's cache in order to achieve this.

I just tried theoldreader on a recommendation above, and it also has a buffer, but it only goes back 20 episodes.

There are other similar services, but this is the killer feature of Reader for me. Very disappointed to see it go.

pyrfeed Google Reader API - replacement for that? by wessman · 2013-03-15 06:05 · Score: 1

I use the pyrfeed Google Reader API to aggregate categories of other sites' RSS/Atom feeds to my personal website. Basically, Google Reader is a aggregator, feed subscriber, database, and single API/XML for my website.

https://code.google.com/p/pyrfeed/wiki/GoogleReaderAPI

Do any of the web-based aggregators people are suggesting here offer a similar API?

Re:WTF Google by Urkki · 2013-03-16 07:16 · Score: 1

Well, for me, who has been kinda using Google+ on the side while contemplating deleting FB account... This seals it, I will not be switching to Google+ no matter what I do with FB.

I will also not be switching to Android phone any time soon. So... hello... Microsoft? WTF you're doing, Google, why do you push me that way?

Re:WTF Google by elton247 · 2013-03-16 07:45 · Score: 1

I am so tired of companies trying to drive me to be more social. I almost unsubscribed to Wired Magazine because every other article is about facebook, twitter or some other useless social app. I get it already.

Maybe I'll go back to Yahoo...

--
How strange it is to be anything at all

Re:WTF Google by elton247 · 2013-03-16 07:53 · Score: 1

I don't see how it can cost more for me to use GR then Gmail, Calendar, Picasa, G+, Earth, Maps, etc, etc. It's already set up and probably takes very little to maintain. And they get the benefit of my user data across multiple apps and platforms.

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How strange it is to be anything at all

Picasa by elton247 · 2013-03-16 09:01 · Score: 1

Its probably just a matter of time before they get rid of Picasa, so I am forced to move my albums to G+. And I pay for extra space too!

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How strange it is to be anything at all

Plenty of RSS readers out there. by Requiem18th · 2013-03-18 05:59 · Score: 1

I just don't understand why people can't just use another reader. I use a gnome one. There are also readers for KDE and othe rlinux platforms. I guess Windows has hundreads of RSS readers.

A lot of them have browser integration and cloud syncing. Heck. Just install one of a docen RSS readers for firefox and use their sync support.

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But... the future refused to change.

283 of 386 comments (clear)