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Google's Killing Me, Killing Reader

Google is killing Reader come July 1, 2013.

 This is a real shame, because the RSS protocol is truly a thing of beauty, and one of the great ways that original content gets distributed.  But to do so, it needs a client as good as the spec, and there was none finer than Google Reader, which could follow me from device to device, platform to platform.

 It was my gmail, but for web content. 

 Now Google's pulling the plug on the service, which is a real shame. I truly hope this isn't the sign of the New Google, where every service must have a 65% market share, and pump traffic into Google+ to stay alive. I'm a huge Google fanboy, and for me to think of something so cynical is probably not a good sign, Mountainview.

 See, it's not that I don't "trust" Google (I don't think Google will ever "trap" my data, or use it for bad ends), it's that I have a hard time investing much faith in Google when they are so capricious about the life and death of their products. I just don't want to do too much heavy lifting of my life into Google's services when they live and die by a single company's edict, and not the will of the internet, like an RFC spec.

I guess it's time for me to rethink my commitment to truly open platforms. So expect more light sharing from this blog, and more links back here from Facebook, Google+, and other social media sites. I'm going to try and keep more of my content where I know it's going to stay put. 

 And when Google pulls the plug on Blogger, I'll be able to grab my data and put it on a host of my choosing, because HTML and RSS aren't controlled by anyone but us.

Comments

  1. Eric ReasonsMarch 14, 2013 at 12:52 AM

    By the way, there's a petition here to try and keep Reader alive, which I dutifully signed. But I'm worried the damage is done.

    https://www.change.org/petitions/google-keep-google-reader-running#share

    ReplyDelete

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