Google Reader to be Retired come July 1st
Google decided that use decline is good enough of a reason to retire its RSS feed aggregator, Google Reader. It will be retired on the 1st of July, 2013.
For a couple of years now, or since 2011 if you want to be more precise, Google performs a so-called spring cleaning and as part of it, it decides to retire or deprecate part of its offering. So far, not including this year’s spring cleaning, some 70 features or services have been closed. Why is Google doing this? The explanation is that the company does not want to spread itself too thin; by giving up on certain products it can devote more resources to high impact ones.
The news is that Google Reader is on the company’s 2013 spring cleaning list. Come the 1st of July, the feed aggregator will be retired. Urs Hölzle, SVP Technical Infrastructure and Google Fellow, explains:
“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.”
Google hopes that a four-month sunset period will be enough for Google Reader’s loyal following to export their data and move to another similar product.
Disapproving of Google’s decision, several petitions to Keep Google Reader Running, Do Not Remove Google Reader on July 1, 2103 or Please Do Not Shut Down Google Reader have sprung up on change.com. As a Google Reader fan, I hope the public’s opinion will get Google to reconsider. If not, I know there are numerous other alternatives out there.
For a couple of years now, or since 2011 if you want to be more precise, Google performs a so-called spring cleaning and as part of it, it decides to retire or deprecate part of its offering. So far, not including this year’s spring cleaning, some 70 features or services have been closed. Why is Google doing this? The explanation is that the company does not want to spread itself too thin; by giving up on certain products it can devote more resources to high impact ones.
The news is that Google Reader is on the company’s 2013 spring cleaning list. Come the 1st of July, the feed aggregator will be retired. Urs Hölzle, SVP Technical Infrastructure and Google Fellow, explains:
“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.”
Google hopes that a four-month sunset period will be enough for Google Reader’s loyal following to export their data and move to another similar product.
Disapproving of Google’s decision, several petitions to Keep Google Reader Running, Do Not Remove Google Reader on July 1, 2103 or Please Do Not Shut Down Google Reader have sprung up on change.com. As a Google Reader fan, I hope the public’s opinion will get Google to reconsider. If not, I know there are numerous other alternatives out there.
