Tag: Sadness

Planning on updating this post as new GReader options start to appear and I get to play with each of them according.

This is not a drill.
(last updated 20:10, March 14th).

AGAIN: Google is closing down Google Reader on July 1st.

Take a moment to process that… then read on.

Marketing Land, where I first read the news (before The Verge got it up, before Techcrunch nailed it too), is building up a list of replacements (all of which I am yet to try). So far they have:

• Netvibes
• Feedly
• Flipboard

Other notables are

• Newsblur
• Hivemined
• The Old Reader

Edit 1: LifeHacker has a good transfer guide too. 

Edit 2: Feedly is swiftly becoming the new Reader of choice. Here’s why:

‘Google announced today that they will be shutting down Google Reader. This is something we have been expecting for some time: We have been working on a project called Normandy which is a feedly clone of the Google Reader API – running on Google App Engine. When Google Reader shuts down, feedly will seamlessly transition to the Normandy back end. So if you are a Google Reader user and using feedly, you are covered: the transition will be seamless.’

Thanks to GigaOm and JMac (comments) for the tip.

Edit 3: RussB’s Magnet.io is now open for sign ups

Outside of those, go follow Russell Beattie. He’s been working on a Google Reader replacement for a while – aka Magnet.io – and if we all go give him our support, it might just make it out before Google hit the shutdown button.

‘Google Reader’ is trending above ‘Pope’ – DO YOU HEAR THAT GOOGLE?!

— James Whatley (@Whatleydude) March 14, 2013

Edit 4: Former Google Reader Product Manager, Brian Shih, explains what he thinks what happened over on Quora

I’m just sad. So sad. Google Reader is where I get my news. It’s where I find my random. It’s what drove my Five things on Friday last year, and it’s what drives my weekend link blasts over Twitter.

It sounds dramatic but, I genuinely am distraught. Anyone who knows my blogging habits knows that I am a news hound. I search for the new, the unknown, the esoteric.. and I share it. Google Reader has been my weapon of choice for as long as I can remember and now, quite literally, its days are numbered.

No good can come of this.

 — – – 

Right now, I don’t know which service to switch to. To be perfectly honest a lot of it will depend on whether a) the next platform can take the weird-ass download file Google gave me, and b) if Reeder App will support it too.

Google Reader was great. Then it was good. Soon it will be gone. 

For now, we mourn.