Thanks Google Reader, We Can Take It From Here
A lot of people are upset about Google Reader shutting down at the end of July. This is kind of ironic given that AFAICT nobody actually liked Reader - it was just the only game in town.
At one time there was a fairly vibrant ecosystem for feeds and feedreaders. Google Reader’s entry into the market killed most of that. Then Google lost interest and the product strategy got muddy and most people I know ended up using 3rd party apps to connect to Google Reader, relegating it to a back-end feed management and syncing service.
I’m happy they’re shutting down and I fully expect we’ll see two things:
- App developers will go old-school and let you subscribe to feeds within the app.
- Someone will come up with an alternate service that replicates Google Reader’s management and syncing features.
We may also see some actual innovation.
So I’m not worried at all.






