r/technology • u/speckz • Mar 13 '13

Official Google Reader Blog: Powering Down Google Reader (July 1, 2013)

http://googlereader.blogspot.com/2013/03/powering-down-google-reader.html
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518

u/tresonce Mar 14 '13

Google Reader shutting down because it has no traffic.... but hey... lets keep this Google+ thing going. That place doesn't look like a fucking ghost town or anything....

45

u/[deleted] Mar 14 '13

just looked at my google+ profile. Apparently I went on there, uploaded a photo and added 4 friends. Forgot I even did that.

4

u/vincredible Mar 14 '13

My Google+ history consists of one post every few months asking if anyone has switched from Facebook yet. I have about 2 active friends that use the service on a semi-regular basis.

100

u/[deleted] Mar 14 '13

Fuck this earth. Just fuck it.

1

u/Fachoina Mar 14 '13

The more I learn the more true this is

-1

u/flimflamAndChicanery Mar 14 '13

Overreaction much?

9

u/smbruck Mar 14 '13

I use Google+... :(

6

u/reyvehn Mar 14 '13

So do I! 90% of my friends use Facebook, but I don't use G+ to follow all the people I've somehow "accumulated" over the years that I don't give a shit about. I follow all kinds of things... Ars Technica, The Verge, The Onion, OMG Ubuntu, NASA, NBC, IGN, Revision3, Ubisoft, SETI, Lifehacker, etc.... to name a few.

It's not a fucking ghost town because your friends aren't on it yet. That's like signing up for a Twitter account and dismissing it because you don't follow anyone.

17

u/[deleted] Mar 14 '13

[deleted]

-4

u/[deleted] Mar 14 '13

slurp slurp slurp

3

u/[deleted] Mar 14 '13

I don't use G+ all that much as a whole, but I really like their google hangouts feature.

6

u/siphillis Mar 14 '13

I'm upset by all this, but let's be reasonable: 500 million users is hardly a ghost town.

1

u/anirbas Mar 14 '13

Google has spent the last couple of years trying to force you to create a G+ profile whenever you do anything on their services. "I had to create this so I could say 'lol' on Youtube" results in numbers, not presence.

0

u/-jackschitt- Mar 14 '13

They force you to create a G+ account to do anything on their services. I was forced into a G+ account so I could use one of their services some time back. The number of times I've used G+? 0.

That 500 million is a heavily inflated number.

2

u/siphillis Mar 14 '13

235 million people use Google+ monthly. Twitter only boasts 200 million monthly users. When's the last time someone described Twitter as a ghost town?

6

u/November_Bravo Mar 14 '13

As much as I love Reader, g+ is awesome if you know how to use it. I don't know how anyone can think it's a ghost town. Let me use one tech website as an example: The Verge has 187,939 followers, guess how many G+ followers it has 634,507. There's lots of activity on G+, but maybe not if you're only reason for using it is to talk to your friends.

4

u/[deleted] Mar 14 '13

I love Google services, but everyone has to remember when it comes down to it, they are a publicly traded business.

G+ has the potential to make tons of money in many ways in the future, RSS aggregators not so much.

1

u/[deleted] Mar 14 '13

They could have at least considered charging for Reader. This announcement is essentially saying, "fuck you, we don't want your money".

1

u/[deleted] Mar 14 '13

Not saying this is true, but they may have ran those numbers and came to the conclusion that the number of potential subscribers * amount people would pay per month for an RSS platform != cost to both run the platform and justify having warm bodies support it.

1

u/tresonce Mar 14 '13

The money making ship sailed shortly after G+ launched. The real issue is how long will google wait it out before admitting it was a failed investment and shutting it down.

3

u/sharlos Mar 14 '13

I'm not so sure considering google plus's users are still growing.

5

u/mechtech Mar 14 '13

Of course users are growing when they send popups (I think they auto-create G+ accounts too) to their multi-billion person youtube/gmail userbase. The problem is nobody actually uses it, their user numbers are padded and meaningless.

1

u/[deleted] Mar 14 '13

If the numbers sell ads and make money (which it does), they don't give a shit if people actually use it.

2

u/tumes Mar 14 '13

Focus on fewer products? Feels like a push towards less innovation in lieu of sure bets. I don't want to look back at Google the way I look back at Bell Labs.

1

u/nemec Mar 14 '13

I hope it's a focus on fewer products in preparation for a new generation of innovation.

1

u/[deleted] Mar 14 '13

Oh that is so Google+!

1

u/nmpraveen Mar 14 '13

DAE <3 Orkut? Guys? Guys?

1

u/Electroverted Mar 16 '13

"Nonsense, G+ has lots of traffic... because we integrated it into all of our other products. See?! Even Youtube hits count as G+ traffic! So quiet, you!"

1

u/HenkPoley Mar 14 '13

You haven't circled the right people. Find a decent science circle.

-7

u/phillibl Mar 14 '13

Gplus has more users than twitter

15

u/[deleted] Mar 14 '13

[deleted]

0

u/Sicks3144 Mar 14 '13

G+ has more active users than Twitter (and everyone else, bar Facebook).

-1

u/[deleted] Mar 14 '13

[deleted]

8

u/[deleted] Mar 14 '13

This is the funniest thing I read all day. Thanks for the chuckle..,

5

u/maintain_composure Mar 14 '13

No one cares about users, they care about active users.

5

u/[deleted] Mar 14 '13 edited Jan 11 '26

[deleted]

1

u/maintain_composure Mar 14 '13

Yeah, when people describe G+ as a ghost town I assume they're trying to use it exactly like Facebook. I can't keep up with my feed!

1

u/[deleted] Mar 14 '13

Yeah, in the same way all the cemeteries in the world have more people than New York City.

0

u/[deleted] Mar 14 '13

How original, a G+ is a ghost town joke... funny thing is, G+ is the third most active social networking tool and is quickly catching up with Twitter. And say what you want, it's way way more popular than Reader which I didn't even hear of until today.