It is a sad, sad day for many of us at Geek Beat as Google has announced a second spring of cleaning. This time Google Reader has made the list. It is due to be retired on July 1st, 2013.
From the Google Official Blog:
We launched Google Reader in 2005 in an effort to make it easy for people to discover and keep tabs on their favorite websites. While the product has a loyal following, over the years usage has declined. So, on July 1, 2013, we will retire Google Reader. Users and developers interested in RSS alternatives can export their data, including their subscriptions, with Google Takeout over the course of the next four months.
This leaves us facing four months of increasingly frantic posts filled with possible alternatives to Google Reader (which we will be following with great interest) as well as many, many “RSS is Dead!” posts.
Where do you fall? Are you a Reader user? Where do you plan to go after it sunsets into history? Let us know in the comments.
(Via Google Official Blog)
This is serious. My great oracle into all things internet is FeedDemon; a program the author of which seems to have put aside.
It is rooted in Google Reader.
I will depend on you to send me to an equivalent place that requires minimum contact with MS.
It took me a long time to master DOS. I don’t want to go through that kind of loss again.
We have plans in the works to bring you guys news about alternatives, of course. Right now my #1 alternative is Feedly, who were themselves ready for this.
http://blog.feedly.com/2013/03/14/google-reader/
Here’s a crowdsourced list of alternatives to Google Reader. Feel free to vote/comment and suggest additions.
http://list.ly/list/33u-google-reader-rss-reader-alternatives-crowdsourced-list
Nick, that’s awesome. Thanks so much!
Might be worth it.
https://www.change.org/petitions/google-keep-google-reader-running
I actually rely on Google Reader and iGoogle to get my daily fix of news from all the sites I follow. I love being able to scroll through headlines and see what articles are worth catching up on. What’s the new solution for this?
Feedly has built their own backend that is compatible with Google’s services. Tom Merritt from TWiT has been tweeting about one called Fever from http://feedafever.com/ too.
Funny thing is that I Started using Google Reader after they dropped the IG home pages where I read my RSS Feeds before. Then I found IFTTT which let me use recipes for Google Reader to auto-post to my blog, and to Facebook, twitter, buffer, etc.
Now it’s going away, too.
I want to say that Firefox has had a built in RSS feeder for years but I have never used it or any RSS feeders. So I could be completely wrong about that.
and if not there are plenty of RSS addons for firefox.