Is the closing of Reader ideal? NO! But you have to know something like that might happen, plus they're giving enough time for people to migrate to other services and exporting your data couldn't be easier.
My question is what are you going to do? Go to other services for everything, never use a google product again in case it closes down? I'd argue that there is even a better chance of any other small dedicated startup to fall apart than google closing down their one of their product, if you wan't to be really sure something is "forever", self host, but don't lie to yourself, that's not even close to a perfect solution.
The mistake here is thinking that google's 'free' services are free. I am letting you spy on me (gather metrics on what I read, what I've marked as important, what I've shared with others) in exchange for the use of your product.
That type of data should be worth 10x more to an advertising company than the 5 or 10 dollars a month than I would pay for each service.
- Average items/day published by subscriptions - Number and percentage of items that you actually read - Number of items you actually clicked, per-subscription - Time of day items are posted / items are read - What subscriptions haven't updated in a long time?
You are right about it exporting starred content, by the way. None of this other data, however, is available for export.
Basically, Google is canceling the direct RSS blog subscriptions that countless blog readers have accumulated over the years. To be sure, it's a fairly low barrier for them to export and thus renew through another provider (be it Twitter or another RSS reader or Google Plus). But even though this seems to readers of Hacker News like a fairly low barrier, some casual or less tech-savvy readers will be left behind.
At least that's what I expect to happen to my blog, which is followed by a very non-technical audience -- the bulk of whom subscribe through some Google Reader-powered source.
It's not just about the data: it's about the habits and familiarity surrounding the process of using the data.
In RSS, I've been using NetNewsWire for years, even though it's basically abandon-ware and has really fallen behind. Why do I keep using it? Because it works okay, and when I've tried to switch—most recently to DevonTHINK PRO—I've gone back to NetNewsWire.
I'd happily pay for a new version or for a better OS X desktop-only RSS app, but I'm a very small market.
The rest is news and updates I already saw on Facebook, Twitter, and RSS feeds. This is with a few carefully curated circles. I culled a few people out for flooding me with uninteresting things, but G+ hasn't removed their posts from the stream. The rest are people who either don't post at all or don't post often.
I'm pretty sure it depends on who you follow, it only takes a minute to search for a couple of your interests and follow them but worth it
I am subscribed to 100+ RSS feeds that have no corollary in Google+ and likely never will.
And as Malik has raised the question in his post - what's in it for Google? No one seems to know this. They might just be testing one of their APIs by building this app.
Anyway, this app is clunky.
[1]Google Reader used to mean RSS the way Search means Google Search and this is very important.
People keep saying something like this without providing real examples. I can believe Reader's existence might have depressed the market for new feed readers (though there have long been competitors around--lots of open source and built in ones, and a few for-pay ones too, like Feedly), but I haven't been able to personally think of any feed readers that were crushed by Reader coming out.
I may just have forgotten them, though (2005 was a long time ago). Anyone have good examples?
Yeah, good point :-)
There was Bloglines. It is still there, only difference being - it's a ghost town now.
There used to be FeedDemon's own sync and now FeedDemon is jumping into the pyre with Reader.
It's been long and I am out of example. Maybe others will bring some.
But thing in this way - "because when the company launched Google Reader in 2005, its free price tag undercut and then virtually destroyed the market for competitive products."[1]
Thing this way - what about an startup that wants to enter hosted mail(web mail too) and they won't because of GMail. The same can be said about IM(for personal use; not those dev chat apps), Forum(Groups?), blah. And Google has good reason to kill them too.
[1]http://www.loopinsight.com/2013/03/19/this-is-what-pisses-me...
Now, you'll have to trust me on these two statements:
1. I did learn "sth 'can' be used for something" from that old good little dictionary[1] and did not pick it from the Internet or SMS and it's a valid use. (Though, I see it also means South in US Eng)
2. That is probably the best dictionary I've come across, even better than OALD, I had them both and hardly ever used the latter (:-) ).
[1]http://dictionary.cambridge.org/dictionary/british/sth?q=sth - not Oxford link but just as good.
I've only ever seen South abbreviated as S, never as sth.