“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.” This makes me very, very sad. Any good alternatives – alternatives with Windows Phone and Metro applications, that is?
Who didn’t see that coming? Took them long enough.
Sucks big time.
They drove out all the other decent RSS competitors and now they’re shutting it down because let’s face it they only care about selling more ads.
O P E N
Edited 2013-03-14 00:11 UTC
That’s about the most ass backwards explanation I have ever read. If all they care about is ads, you would think they would keep it open so that they could put ads on it. Any amount of ads are better than none.
Edited 2013-03-14 01:51 UTC
Placing ads costs money. In server costs, in electricity bills, salaries of people managing it all, time spent on deals being made, etc…
Every big company has the means calculate stuff like this to extreme detail.
If it costs more to show the ads than it returns, there’s no point in keeping a service open.
And at the very least, Google used open technologies. Anyone can write an RSS reader. There are plenty of alts out there.
Then kiss Google mail, calendar and Android good bye 🙂
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=G2y8Sx4B2Sk
Argh! That has been my favourite rss reader since forever. Nothing else has really compared to it.
I’d be interested in any alternative that is as fast and clean as reader.
I have been trying
theoldreader.com
it’s not perfect yet, but still a worthy effort
what kind of issues? i’m looking at it.
I like yandex feed reader.
I stopped using desktop RSS aggregators after realizing Google Reader was much faster and easier to use. They enhanced it over the years, including keyboard navigation, and synchronization with Android phones.
Now, I’ll be left with almost no alternative. Does anybody know anything viable?
feedly.com:
(this is my choice)
+great mobile app
+firefox/chrome plugin
-doesnt have a business proposal.
netvibes.com:
+can double as iGoogle for the orphans
+does have paid plans
-only mobile web page (that is not very fast)
newsblur.com:
+looks very clean
+does have mobile apps
-the most flimsy of all, had few problems with performance and ditched all together
Thanks, I’ll check those.
I’m trying Newsblur for the last day, and they’ve put quite a bit of time into upping their server count and making it work.
It’s slower than Reader, but as they add more servers, it will get better. It’s completely functional now, though.
Web apps are turning out to be a big goose egg. Not b/c they couldn’t be very good. But b/c the companies behind them can’t help but develop them into a clunky ad-overrun state. Google has systematically made everyone of it’s offerings worse and worse. And good alternatives tend to come from small players, which must charge a premium to stay in business.
Web 3.0 is nearly here and I predict it will be the resurrection of the desktop app built with web technologies and social connectivity.
The problem with desktop apps in this particular case is that the app needs to be always-on – otherwise it misses articles that appeared and dropped off the bottom of the feed while the desktop app was offline (laptop suspended, on a plane, whatever).
That was the big advantage Reader had over the various desktop RSS readers that used to be so popular – that because it was Google’s server doing the polling, nothing was ever missed. That, and if you read your news feeds from multiple devices (work machine, home machine, smartphone), keeping everything on Reader avoided the need to sync the databases across different devices…
This is solved in Windows 8. You can use a Background Task to fetch and store RSS feeds locally (at 30 minute intervals, when you sign in/sign out, and when internet connectivity changes).
If you use a Clover Trail SoC or an ARM SoC you can take advantage of Connected Standby which lets your PC go into low power states while periodically waking up to run background tasks.
And, how exactly does that get around the ‘system needs to be always on to poll’ requirement, allow 3rd party apps to sync, allow mobile clients on Android/iOS to sync, etc?
A Windows 8 requirement is also a non-starter for most people.
A server-based setup is the best. This just might push me toward ownCloud. If I need a server running all the time, may as we make it useful.
You don’t need to always poll. This isn’t really time sensitive information. Its a convenience.
If you run a Background Task at a frequent enough interval (every 15 minutes) you get a degree of freshness of data without plummeting the battery.
This in addition to Connected Standby allowing ultra low power background processing would address a lot of your complaints.
Sure, it may be. But at that point you’re just moving the goalposts. This is a happy middle ground, in my opinion.
The idea of a desktop RSS reader is naive and stupid.
-Your device would have to be constantly turned on and connected to a network.
-When adding a feed, the content in *your* version of the feed would begin at the moment in time that you added the feed rather than some far earlier date when the service started to track it. (haven’t you ever used Reader?)
-Your feed data is not synced between devices (pc, tablet, phone) unless you devise some complicated syncing mechanism.
-You risk losing your data and have more to back up.
-Consumes more local computing resources.
I’ve been using Reader for almost 10 years and never had to worry about any of the above.
Edit: and before you say that Reader users got burned while local app users wouldn’t have been consider that there are 10+ alternative services eagerly waiting to import our Reader data. The problem now is to pick one.
Edited 2013-03-17 08:15 UTC
How does that solve anything? The problems I cited with desktop RSS readers is that the device needs to be turned on, and that it needs to have internet connectivity at all times. I don’t see how running a background task helps with either of those issues – nor with the question of syncing across multiple devices.
The background task would run at an interval of 15 minutes (in addition to whenever connectivity changes, a new account session is started, and a plethora of other system trigger events) *and* it runs while the PC is asleep.
You can also (if polling is your thing, as you and the commenter above allude to) implement a Transport Trigger which lets you do long polling in the background. Its used for VOIP scenarios but it would work equally well here.
Still doesn’t cover syncing read/unread status across multiple devices.
Nope. For that you could likely use roaming storage, or insert your cloud here. Can be something as simple as programmatic dropbox access.
That’s a definite caveat though.
Have anyone told the development departments that they can now stop creating that non-existant web 2.0? As marketing has allready invented 3.0, why bother creating anything, market gurus will soon have another iteration of marketspeak nonsense?
Agile project anyone?
Part1:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4u5N00ApR_k
Part2:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lAf3q13uUpE
But I want to run an agile project!! LOL
Edited 2013-03-14 03:25 UTC
Not only this bit of news, but they also yanked all ad blockers from the Play store, and there’s a video which indicates they’re porting Google Now to iOS, which is another assault in Google’s war on Android.
In other words, Google has been f’ing up all day
Edited 2013-03-14 00:32 UTC
The biggest limitation in the RSS format is that it is limited to a certain number of back-posts.
The thing that sets Google Reader apart from other RSS aggregators was how it would fetch posts from their servers when I was off-line. So, when I go camping or visit parents working in China, Google would build up a reading list for me when I get back. That way I wouldn’t miss any important news.
Short of subscribing via email which can get cluttered quickly, I don’t really see any other viable alternatives.
All you need to do is buy some web hosting and install a self-hosted RSS aggregator on it. There are a bunch of them available for free:
https://www.google.com/search?q=open+source+rss+aggregator&ie=utf-8&…
I don’t wanna. Just offer the same Google Reader had and let me pay for it.
I think the real reason is this.
http://rt.com/news/germany-law-google-copyright-973/
http://www.economist.com/news/international/21565928-newspapers-woe…
Yeah it’s not working out economically for publishers, but also, Google’s business is serving ads on web pages, and Google Reader subverts that business model. It’s bad for the publishers and bad for the advertisers.
I visit more pages (and therefore more adverts) because I use a feed reader, otherwise i’d visit fewer sites, skim the article titles and jump over plenty of ‘maybe’ reads.
That’s the very reason I use greader, to better find material to read in full.
I really don’t want to use another RSS reader. Especially it it means some stupid local client that can’t sync read/unread items and preferences across multiple machines.
I see a lot more ads if I’m out reading stuff on the Internet. I find things to read via RSS. Hey Google, bad RSS clients mean I see fewer ads.
So sad.
Well, looks like I’ll have to set up an owncloud server after all! Not sure if it has an rss reader already, but if it doesn’t, it shouldn’t be that hard to make one anyway!
ownCloud 5.x will have one. 5.0 was just released, but the RSS reader/aggregator is still in beta. And it includes an API for external clients to use. The dev wants to make it a gReader replacement. He’s even trying to create a Google Summer of Code project to create a mobile app that interfaces with it.
I’ve been a huge fan of Google Reader for years. I usually start every morning with my coffee and Google Reader. It’s really the only Google service that kept me using Google all these years. Oh well, what can you do? It was free after all.
Life goes on. I’ve tried using Pulse, but didn’t like the format. Has anyone tried Feedly? It has an Android app as well and seems to be a good alternative.
I started using Feedly and so far I really like it. It synchronizes with Google Reader and will keep working after Google Reader stops. The only thing I miss is they don’t have a web version. I wish they would just make it a webapp and convert it from there to Firefox, Chrome, Android, IOS, WP8 etc.
Feedly has a web version. http://www.feedly.com/home (you’ll have to login to your acct.)
Have you tried that in a browser without feedly’s extension? It doesn’t work at my end without the special extension.
Edited 2013-03-15 19:44 UTC
Sorry, I missed the part about the Chrome app. I’m using the Chrome app & it works well. Haven’t tried on another browser or outside the app.
are here:
http://reviews.cnet.com/8301-19512_7-57574201-233/google-reader-is-…
I’m really sad about this. The web-centricness of it is key. As a long Vim user, I love the keyboard shortcuts as well. I can plow through my daily news quite easily with it.
Sigh.
This just speaks to what a double edged sword cloud computing can be.
We need to push for having data exporting and interop at the data layer between cloud service providers. That way if one decides to pack up show, you can just export your data and move on.
Its great that Google Reader has this option, but some cloud services don’t and some users get shafted.
I downloaded the subscriptions file from my google reader account and is trying out different desktop readers. Many of them are extremely good now in comparison to when gR was launched.
It will take some time getting used to i guess, but i will just have to cope.
Oh well, in any case: Now there is only one single product i use made by google as they keep shutting down the stuff i like. It was rather painful to move away from gmail and get all my contacts to update their adress lits but one thing of googles that i still enjoy is youtube but ofcourse never via a web-browser any more as the “minitube” application is so darn awesome and still getting better.
This just goes to show that everyone who thought Google had noble intentions with shutting off Exchange Active Sync was wrong.
They’re turning off CalDAV and telling people to use the Calendar API. So much for standards.
Wait, didn’t Microsoft just announce that they were writing a CalDAV-compliant client?
So now Google is shutting down CalDAV, except for “whitelisted developers.” Is Microsoft a whitelisted developer?
I’d assume so.
And removing AdBlock from Google Play.
Google is just like any corporation, it is about time people realize all corporations are alike.
Apparently Malware is okay. Ad Blockers? OH NO that’s not allowed.
You can’t download Youtube videos in Chrome, either. The video downloaders block Youtube, because Google will ban them from the extensions gallery if they don’t.
To download videos from Youtube, you have to use Firefox. Those extensions are fully-functional.
I’m an anti-cloud kind of guy and I’ve been using Tiny Tiny RSS for a while now (http://tt-rss.org/). I’ve set it up on my own server and so far it’s been a joy. You can also use their own service, if I’m not mistaken. I like it better than Google Reader, to be honest.
It’s a full FLOSS project and that includes the Android client. The official one in Google Play needs a key to run for more than 7 days, but it’s cheap and it’s worth it. If not, you can always compile your own, so no big deal.
not bad, but when you discover and add a feed 5 years after a cloud service started tracking it you lose out on that 5 years of content when you search your feeds.
I’m not sure that’s a good thing
(information overload)
I’m using different RSS readers on my all my (mobile) computers, but they all synch to Google Reader so I’m in synch on every device.
It worked great while it lasted.
I started with Bloglines in 2004, and migrated to Reader at about the time Bloglines was going to be shut down (and then it kept going…). Now I’m shopping for a suitable replacement.
My primary requirement is being web-based, with the possibility of syncing with client-side applications. Annoyingly, some of the web-based alternatives I have looked at do have mobile apps, but just for iPhone and Android. BlackBerry and Windows Phone support is pretty thin.
I’d hate to be the app developers who hitched their wagons to the Reader system.
privateoss.com http://www.privateoss.com“> is a good alternative.
I would suggest switching to something like http://www.newsblur.com It offers a free plan for up to 64 RSS channels. If however you feel like getting a premium account – it is only $1/month
And the whole app looks really well.
i have over 600 feeds. theoldreader.com looks like a nice option but i should check their export policies to prepare for the day when they decide to Google their users.
I had an argument with Mozilla over their own dis-interest in RSS. This may be worth reading to some, Google falls in line with everything that’s being said; browser vendors don’t care about RSS because they have stopped caring about the individual user.
http://camendesign.com/rss_is_dying
http://camendesign.com/rss_a_reply
The lack of investment by browser vendors into native built-in RSS readers is what has pushed users into using Facebook as their one and only news aggregating site, and look at what power that’s placed in Facebook’s hands and taken away from the browser vendors.
The next thing to die due to browser vendor apathy is e-mail. Watch this space.
Maybe it is due to my age, but I still use desktop RSS readers and email clients.
We’re being replaced by Facebook hipsters who loathe all use of e-mail with a passion. The marketing money is aimed at them, not us. E-mail will be all-but-dead within the decade.
I do not doubt that consumer use of email is declining.
However, businesses will continue to run on email for the rest of the decade, perhaps longer.
“Facebook for Business.”
And Google would probably love if some of that power went into Google+ …maybe that’s also why Google Reader is no longer desirable?
Why don’t they considering changing their business model and charge for selected apps. If something is high quality software are really don’t mind paying.
That said I haven’t used RSS since 2006.
Browser: Mozilla/5.0 (iPhone; CPU iPhone OS 6_1_2 like Mac OS X) AppleWebKit/536.26 (KHTML, like Gecko) Version/6.0 Mobile/10B146 Safari/8536.25
Before I started using Google Reader, I used Bloglines. I see that they are still in operation. Maybe I should change back now.
This shows the commitment of Google for innovation and changinghttp://www.nwoow.com/techonology/google-to-shut-down-google-reader-… for as per current environment. Indian companies should learn from Google. BR// Vipul Tiwari
I was a faithful Google reader user until they changed some things a couple of years ago. I don’t recall all the details now but it was very annoying and I have not used it since.
Anybody like to lay odds on Google ending up buying one of these (Feedly?)) alternative services in a year or two when they see the eyeballs it has got LOL
*luke skywalker mode*
NOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO
I found this http://1kpl.us via the comments on /.
It isn’t perfect, and the author says as much – and allow for the fact the site is getting hit hard at the moment as slash dotters (and Reddit readers (it got a mention or so there too) pile on over to take a look).
You should check out Brief extension for firefox.
For me it has always been better than google reader, much more enjoyable than feedly (Like the simple but essential (for me) ability to hide read posts…)
http://nick.typepad.com/blog/2013/03/the-end-of-feeddemon.html
Such a bad move, I thought it’s April fools’
PS. There is also petition: https://www.change.org/petitions/google-keep-google-reader-running going on, which I paste from slashdot
You can at least vote
Edited 2013-03-14 22:54 UTC
I was using Netvibes.com but I switched to uStart.org — worth checking out, it can also import your settings.
Is vp8 still free ‘libre’ open? and patented?