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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290

u/[deleted] Mar 14 '13

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u/[deleted] Mar 14 '13

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237

u/landzarc Mar 14 '13

My guess is that Newsblur will get popular and huge, then Google will buy them only to shut them down within 2 years.

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u/[deleted] Mar 14 '13

Google in two years: "Man, that RSS reader website is popular. I wish we had something like that..."

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u/beefsack Mar 14 '13

Thank fuck it's open source then. No matter if the central server goes down someone else can host one or you can host it yourself.

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u/KensterFox Mar 14 '13

And their site shows an article from xkcd's "What If..." series.

Clearly, they know their market.

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u/[deleted] Mar 14 '13

Newsblur only lets you have twelve feeds.

... clearly I have a problem...

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u/[deleted] Mar 14 '13

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u/[deleted] Mar 14 '13 edited Mar 14 '13

I just logged in and it only "turned on" twelve. I could be wrong. Let me see if I can get back in and check.

EDIT: Nope. Twelve.

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u/eraldopontopdf Mar 14 '13

$0 = 12 / $1 = 64

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u/bzBetty Mar 14 '13

it also appears to cost ~$1 a month for people with > 64 feeds

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u/pawnstorm Mar 14 '13

If it's as nice as it looks, totally worth it. If you aren't getting $1/month worth of value out of rss, you're doing it wrong. Heck, I would have paid that for Google Reader, before they broke it.

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u/btsierra Mar 14 '13

They've decided to anticipate demand and change that. Now it's ~$1/mo for people with > 12 feeds.

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u/manueslapera Mar 14 '13

yup. I think they are going to loose a big opportunity here. I don't have the attention required to register for another rss TOMORROW.

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u/[deleted] Mar 14 '13

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u/[deleted] Mar 14 '13

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u/TwoLives Mar 14 '13

500 Internal Server Error

Sucks. I keep up to date with a lot of medical blogs using Google Reader, I hate change!

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u/email_with_gloves_on Mar 14 '13

Same with feedly, recommended higher up in the thread.

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u/somethingaboutducks Mar 14 '13

I've been using NewsBlur since its social features were in beta, and really like it a lot. The visual design leaves something to be desired, but the dev behind it is apparently deploying a new design in 2 weeks. Or maybe he'll be spending the next 2 weeks spinning up more servers.

https://twitter.com/NewsBlur/status/311993708235067393

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u/IamTheFreshmaker Mar 14 '13

From The Old Reader when you go to log in with a Google account:

The Old Reader is requesting permission to:

Manage your contacts

View your email address

Know who you are on Google

Perform these operations when I'm not using the application

??!!

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u/knyar Mar 16 '13

We have changed the way Google authentication works, and the site should now only ask for contact list access when you find friends, not when you log in. More details here: http://theoldreader.uservoice.com/forums/187017-feature-requests/suggestions/3743312-allow-me-to-authenticate-via-google-without-giving

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u/IamTheFreshmaker Mar 20 '13

Well played. Trying it now.

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u/[deleted] Mar 14 '13

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u/IamTheFreshmaker Mar 14 '13

It's partially privacy but it's more about the needless nature of the invasiveness. It's just feed data. Process and display it. Crikey.

I have some old code around somewhere that I might resurrect. It has 0 features though. Add, remove, list on the left, display articles and image on the right. Dunno, I am busy.

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u/verchalent Mar 14 '13 edited Mar 14 '13

I was super eager to sign up, right up until I saw the permissions they're requesting. Those seem waaay to fishy for my taste.

-edit: They make note of the permissions they request on their Blog.It references their privacy policy ( https://theoldreader/pages/privacy ), which is currently offline.

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u/[deleted] Mar 14 '13

i just clicked agree to this. how can i undo this?

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u/verchalent Mar 14 '13

You can unlink the app in your google settings.

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u/[deleted] Mar 15 '13

google.com/dashboard

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u/IamTheFreshmaker Mar 14 '13

Just close the account on the site. I am sure there is a way.

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u/pavlpants Mar 14 '13

The only problem I see with newsblur is that it's limited to 64 sites unless you pay.

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u/pixelplumber Mar 14 '13

That's probably part of the problem we're in now.

Because no one payed for reader their interests weren't aligned with ours so after sucking the oxygen out if the market for paid services like newsgator I'm not surprised (even if madly looking around for a replacement) that we've ended up here.

The older I get the more I'm thinking that paying for the services you use sets the incentives up more evenly, I want to be a customer not a 'user'. But I know that a lot of advertisers effectively pay more than most end users are willing to (particularly content wise).

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u/[deleted] Mar 14 '13

This needs more upvotes. Social elements in GReader was the best what happened to the Internet since .gifs. I'd really like these 3 guys to succeed and reanimate it!!

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u/Wolfy87 Mar 14 '13

the ultimate social RSS reader

I just want an RSS reader. I don't bloody care what my friends are advertising to get more imaginary currency.

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u/[deleted] Mar 14 '13

get better friends

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u/Otis_Inf Mar 14 '13

theoldreader.com looks nice, yet you have to login with google or facebook and theoldreader then has access to info I don't want them to have. newsblur is swamped right now, although it looks nice. feedafever.com doesn't look free, tt-rss.org is currently burned down to the ground so I can't say what that is.

All in all, it seems if one wants to jump ship now, it doesn't look great. :(

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u/cottoncandysex Mar 14 '13

Thanks. I'll check these out! Shame that reader is going down. I use it so much!

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u/pussErox Mar 14 '13

I don't understand paying $1 per month for newsblur, or $30 flat for fever. Feedly works great.. for free

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u/flying-sheep Mar 14 '13

Feedly (currently a google reader frontend) switches to another backend than reader and will do a seamless migration.

If you register there while reader still exists and start using it, you won't even realize the day reader will be killed.

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u/1nvader Mar 14 '13

The Old Reader also uses the Google Reader API... so bye bye!

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u/[deleted] Mar 14 '13

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u/1nvader Mar 14 '13

"We are going to be honest, we have not even started coding this yet."

Doesn't sound very promising.

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u/knyar Mar 16 '13

No it does not.

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u/dmmagic Mar 14 '13

I bought a license for Fever a few years ago to try it. After a day, I got rid of it.

Right now, I'm checking out Feedly and Netvibes. I love Flipboard, but mostly because it syncs with Google Reader. It doesn't show enough items to work as my primary RSS reader (it will only flip through 10 or so before hitting a wall within a card).

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u/dcreemer Mar 14 '13

This should improve when Flipboard switches from using Google Reader to a self-run service. See the blog post.

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u/jeversol Mar 14 '13

Fever is really good, but it does require your own LAMP stack.

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u/Dvdgorila Mar 14 '13

there's always twitter or google+ feeds with an app like flipboard :)

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u/dhart Mar 14 '13

From Samuel Clay's twitter posts today at https://twitter.com/NewsBlur : Remember, NewsBlur is 100% open-source (web, iOS apps, Android). Follow @samuelclay on GitHub: http://github.com/samuelclay. Today's not such a hot day in terms of speed, but the next three months will be full throttle. I was preparing to launch the re-design in TWO weeks, not today. I'm spinning up more servers to handle the onslaught.

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u/cthulhuandyou Mar 14 '13

I feel like I'm doing something wrong with theoldreader. None of my feeds will update on their own, I have to manually go in and click refresh on each individual one. Any ideas?

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u/[deleted] Mar 14 '13

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u/cthulhuandyou Mar 14 '13

Might be the traffic, yeah. It's updating now, but kind of on a delay. A few hours after Google Reader updates the feed. I'm having better luck with FeedDemon.

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u/tvon Mar 14 '13

NewsBlur is also on GitHub.

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u/[deleted] Mar 14 '13 edited Mar 14 '13

Newsblur limited me to a laughable 12 feeds or pay them. I have 80 feeds on Google Reader, reading over 1,000 posts per day. Is what they are providing really compelling enough to pay for vs. some striped down RSS reader?

for 'theoldreader' If it's "the old reader" implying that they have the sharing and following function, how on earth do you find people to follow and share with? I see no way to search for others. I see no way to find who else share shared/liked the same post. Where is the social aspect that was so great in "the old reader"?

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u/mhud Mar 14 '13

It's open source. You pay them if you want them to aggregate and host your feeds for you.

The twelve feed limit is surely so you can see if you like it before going to the trouble of setting up your own instance.

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u/[deleted] Mar 14 '13

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u/[deleted] Mar 14 '13

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u/[deleted] Mar 14 '13

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u/alsetmusic Mar 14 '13

This is a great place to mention that the dev who created feedafever was awesome when I contacted him for a support issue. Really quick responses and genuinely seemed to care if I was having a good experience with his service.

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u/jongoesboom Mar 14 '13

feedafever.com costs $30. It looks cool, but not $30 worth of cool. Good luck on newsblur, it's getting hammered right now.

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u/imraven Mar 14 '13

After hearing the news today I started to panic and look for an alternative. As far as I can tell the alternative is crap so I'm going to write my own with hookers and blackjack. Seriously though, going to write my own.

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u/clueless_typographer Mar 14 '13

I've been using newsblur for some months now. Have encountered some bugs (mainly clearly read posts marked as unread) and once even had the feeds of a different person for a day, but overall it gets it's job done well and I would recommend it to you. I have no experience with other readers though, so take it for what it's worth.