Farewell Google Reader, You’ve Been a Great Friend
It really shouldn’t be any surprised that Google axed Google Reader yesterday. Granted you’ll have use of it up until July but after that you can wave good-bye to a very old and dear friend.
It’s VERY unfortunate they choose to do this and it really shouldn’t come as any surprise considering the Feedburner fiasco a few short months ago (I won’t get into the possibility of Feedburner disappearing at some point from the US as this is a post about Google Reader).
Google has become more and more of a marketing tool and that’s an unfortunate event. I imagine their logic behind closing down Google Reader is to get people to move towards Google+ which hasn’t quite taken off as much as they’d like. Forcing people to follow their favorite blogs and sites via Google+ is a hope that it will somehow at some point become an industry standard I guess but Twitter kinda has the market share here.
But I digress because if I get into Authorship, Google Panda Updates, and axing such great services such as Feedburner and Google Reader I’ll have your ear all damn day.
The moral of this story is before long you’ll have to start exporting your RSS and followings to a new reader. Discussions of Feedly and other readers are on the horizon but courtesy a reader’s tweet today I’d like to direct you to www.theoldreader.com.
It’s early I know, you’re thinking I still have until July to make the change, but please do start shopping a new reader before that time. Google allows you to easily download an archive of your feeds and if you decide to go with Old Reader you can easily import the list (most other reader’s will let you do the same).
@musingsofamuse check out theoldreader.com similar to google reader easy to transfer to.
— Emmeline Cyanide(@NinthofHextor) March 14, 2013
I offer my comfort to you while we mourn this great Google feature. It’s unfortunate the Google of yesteryear is more about marketing than the user experience and the small fries.
P.S. Please keep in mind Old Reader is getting hit hard today as are other RSS sites so if importing doesn’t work at first just give it a second as the Internet is chaotic today after the news of Google Reader’s demise hit.