GOOGLE AIN’T GOT TIME FOR READ(ER)
The recent announcement of Google retiring its RSS feed service, Google Reader, set off a wave of commentary about the service, why it might be going, and what users are to do now. The fact of the matter is, as explained by Buzzfeed, Google Reader drives traffic to Google at exponentially higher rates than G+. Still, Google says that use of Reader is “dwindling” and that the company is “pouring all of [its] energy into fewer products,” which is great, and hopefully beneficial to end user, but does not fully explain why Reader is being killed.
Why does Reader have to die, mommy?
It is no secret that Google makes money by selling advertising. Google+ allows more options, more areas to advertise, and more focused information about end users for advertisers. There is no social component to Reader (due to the fact Google killed it), so advertising had zero social components to rely on to target users. The advertising space on Reader was small and only displayed in items that were opened. In this aspect, G+ is vastly superior to Reader, and is very likely the real reason Google made the decision it did.
In 2011 Google cut the team running Reader, so Reader has basically been self-sufficient for two years. If Google was “pouring all of [its] energy into fewer products” to improve end user experience, why does Reader have to die to make it happen? There is no doubt, business motives that Google does not wish to expound on, and we will never be able to tie the death of Reader to those accomplishments. This leaves Reader users to forever wonder why the top RSS feed organizer on the web had to die.
How do we move on?
The short answer is we will very likely never know the true motivation for the move. We are simply left with our collection of RSS feeds that took years of fine tuning to create and curate. There are a number of services available, with the easiest transition being to go to Feedly.com. The service automatically syncs your Reader set up and allow you to pick up right where you left off, with the exception of being able to automatically set up Google Alerts to go to your Feedly account. This adds an extra step for anyone using Reader to curate Google Alerts—a deal breaker for some.
Other RSS curation services include The Old Reader—which happened to be in the right place at the right time—NewsBlur, Taptu, Digg (whose news reader is set to launch in the second half of 2013), Pulse (which is loved and invested in by LinkedIn), Twitter lists, and the ability to feed your RSS feeds to email.
None of these services do what Google Reader did nor have the ability and ease of using your Google account to manage feeds and alerts. You’ll have another set of credentials to remember, another step when dealing with alerts, and a flat out different experience. While these are all minor inconveniences, they add up, and they serve as a stark reminder of just how set in our ways we become with free online services.
Getting back to reality
Mashable has set up petitions to try to save the service, but Google is not well known for responding to outcry over proverbial spilled milk. The move will likely cause a wave of user rage similar to every time Facebook makes a change of any kind, including users claiming they will never use a Google product again.
Then we will all fire up Chrome on our Android phone, do a quick Google search to find our Gmail account, and email our co-workers about updating the AdWords campaign for a client while watching the latest viral video on YouTube and grabbing directions on Google Maps.
The real cruelty here is iGoogle gets to live until November 1, while Reader is retiring on July 1.
Be sure to add us to your circles on G+ for all the latest news.