Sure, I know it's an old system, and it hadn't been updated for a while... in fact, I can't even find it in the Play Store anymore... Well, you can if you search outside the store... it'll give you a direct link. But search through the "Google Inc." apps and you won't find it.But Google Reader was a great system, I've been using it almost since it began. And was a life saver for reading my many many blogs I like to follow.
But all that ends on July 1st, 2013. Sure, we've seen the writing on the wall for a while. No updates, more focus on Currents, removing AdWords from Reader streams, etc...
But come on. Nothing worked the way that Google Reader did. Yet, in their ever growing wisdom they're going to let it expire.
From their blog: http://googleblog.blogspot.ca/2013/03/a-second-spring-of-cleaning.html
We launched Google Reader in 2005 in an effort to make it easy for people to discover and keep tabs on their favorite websites. While the product has a loyal following, over the years usage has declined. So, on July 1, 2013, we will retire Google Reader. Users and developers interested in RSS alternatives can export their data, including their subscriptions, with Google Takeout over the course of the next four months.
Unbelievable.
There needs to be a way to reach Google to explain how nothing else on the market matches its power.
There's #savegooglereader ... but dunno. There's a Save Google Reader community...
Here's why I preferred Google Reader over anything else:
- It was simple with the extension to subscribe to an RSS in Google Reader and it would always fetch in realtime my feeds.
- There was a web based version so no matter if I was on my phone, then my tablet, whenever I got to the computer it was the same place I left off. Same feeds, same favourites.
- You could sort oldest to newest so I could start where I left off and not have to wade through the newest news to get to the oldest. That just seems wrong. It's intuitive that you would start at the last chronological piece you were reading.
- It merged the streams. Nothing else mixes your feeds together (at least not that I've seen). Other services I'd have to go to each RSS feed separately.
- It had a mark unread option so I could read it first next time I picked it up
- It had a 'star' option to put specific articles aside. That and the tags I "kept" a lot of interesting articles in Reader vs ever having to make bookmarks.
- It's integrated well with the Google services.
There's a ton more features... but I'm kinda too pissed off right now.
I read a lot on Google Reader. Like a LOT.
 |
| and I know I've used it longer than since 2010. |
I have a couple of hundred RSS feeds subscribed to in my feed. It's easy to just add them. And then I go through my combined stream and I read it from oldest to newest. In a day I'll go through about 1000 articles. At least. No other service allows such mass consumption.
I could rant all day, you know that. I've tried others... nothing really compares tho'. You guys know something I'm missing?
I made a post on my feed sharing my 'googlers' that I had circled and that we should post to them why we need to #SaveGoogleReader. Please, let's go do that!
Comments
Post a Comment