Hacker News Reader

Comment by iamsb | Hacker News Reader

A good model will be to start working on a new startup with a competing product as soon as google launches something. In couple of years when they shut down, provide migration paths. Swim in $$$.

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This is, to some extent, what Feedly did. They started off as a really nice, somewhat niche magazine-style news reader built on Google Reader. When Google Reader shut down, it was in their best interest to implement the API themselves. They had the very clever idea to make that a _public_ API, just like Google Reader, so in the end all kinds of apps and services wanted to use it, and it seems they're doing really well. (I'm still a big fan of their own news reader, and have a Feedly t-shirt somewhere…). I'd be very interested to hear the full story of the Google Reader debacle from their end :)

Feedly was amazingly positioned for that. Their two signature featuers were: 1.) it looked and worked almost exactly like Google Reader, and 2.) it could import your Google Reader feeds with one click.

Within months of Google announcing Reader's closing, Feedly had acquired something like 8 million new users. Amazing stroke of fortune for a well-deserving product. I still happily use the free version.

Even though I don't use any of the Pro features, I still pay for Pro to help support in anyway I think I can. Love Feedly.

2) is what almost every new service could do.

And 1) I don’t understand. Feedly was one of the first ones I tried, and none of the settings I tried got me close to a headline-only view that I used in GReader. I used Newsblur for a while and am on TT-RSS nowadays. But Feedly always seemed to cater more to those people who enjoy image-heavy subreddits and full-page hero images, or pinterest.

Nothing I tried with Feedly got me a simple, no distraction one-line, click to expand downwards view.

Note that all of this was around when GReader closed, no idea what changed.

Odd, I was able to get a headline only view almost immediately. I believe the display option said something like "most like Google Reader". Titles-only View is what I am using now.

I remember something like this, but everything took up more space.

edit: Just decided to log in and check ;) So what I didn’t like was the way it popped up from the side instead of actually doing what GReader (and TT-RSS and Newsblur) can do: Simply popping down the current article, and not switching the view.

They added this view after Google announced Reader would be shutting down. I was one of the people asking for a headline view like Reader had.

>And 1) I don’t understand. Feedly was one of the first ones I tried, and none of the settings I tried got me close to a headline-only view that I used in GReader.

I am pretty sure that I tried Feedly in the post-"Oh no, Google Reader is going away!" panic everyone else using the service was in at the time, and like you I could not replicate the feel. The Old Reader was the closest alternative I found among the several I tried, but soon afterwards Inoreader appeared with a very, very, very close-to-Google Reader feel, and I've been extremely happy on it ever since. (If only Inoreader would correctly open the comment link and not the original article in the HN RSS feed.)

1) same, I found http://www.ighome.com and it looked almost like a copy of my Google setup.

if someone's looking for an rss reader recommendation - i tried feedly, but inoreader is my favorite by far

(not affiliated, just a v happy user)

I am pretty sure that I tried Feedly in the post-"Oh no, Google Reader is going away!" panic everyone else using the service was in at the time, and could not replicate the feel. The Old Reader was the closest alternative I found among the several I tried, but soon afterwards Inoreader appeared, and I've been extremely happy on it ever since. (If only Inoreader would correctly open the comment link and not the original article in the HN RSS feed.)

> If only Inoreader would correctly open the comment link and not the original article in the HN RSS feed

I'm pretty sure that's down to HN themselves choosing to put the original article's URL into each entry's "link" field

I also like and use Inoreader. It's better than any other service I tested (especially Feedly), and very lightweight and Google Reader-esque.

To be honest, however, I was disappointed with the recent price increases and other changes. I have a grandfathered Pro account that I'm paying $18/year for until 2021 (with a 40% off coupon). Then my options will be to either pay $50/year for a much more limited service (only 30 rules instead of unlimited, only 30 filtered feeds instead of unlimited), or reject the price increase and go back to a "supporter" account, which doesn't have any perks and costs $20/year, more than I'm paying now for Pro.

Is Feedly swimming in money?

For those that remember Google Notebook, this is also what Evernote did 10 years ago. It's why I've been using Evernote for 10 years and why I'll never use Google Keep.

https://www.cnet.com/news/evernotes-google-notebook-importer...

I wonder about the damage Google does to any potential start ups in a field.

How much buzz can you get when everyone’s first thought is “how could this be any good? Google already tried that and failed...”

I don't know, Google has failed at all kinds of products that other companies have achieved massive success with. This includes some really ubiquitous tools like a social network (Google+) or messaging apps (too many to list). I think at this point most people assume a failed project from Google has more to do with the company than the concept itself.

But these are all things where Google was late to the game and didn't succeed in taking someone's crown. So it's an interesting question: How does Google failing at some product that isn't already a well established concept impact the consumer's sentiment towards the idea behind it.

FWIW Google had orkut long before facebook became a success and moved out of colleges. Google had gtalk long before WhatsApp was conceived.

Microsoft had MSN Messenger, there was ICQ and many others, and there was "always" IRC etc., and frankly things were great with gAIM, Pidgin and other messenger aggregators until Google Talk switched off access for third-party apps and launched Hangouts...

I remember my whole family was in gtalk and other jabber talkers. The funny thing they were usable on mobile long before android/ios phones. There were JavaME clients that could run on many common phones. I still miss T9.

GTalk was really in a position to be the #1 messenger.

Orkut was pretty much killed in the English speaking world by the Brazilian Portuguese speakers which took over any group which was created. They pushed every photography, climbing and Linux group to the point where, as a non-Portuguese speaker, the site became way more noise than signal. You could flash a group as being for a specific language, but it wasn't enforced when someone violated this. Orkut admins ignored complaints and the malfeasanant posters rebutted with something which might translated to "who's going to make me?"

So, it became a useless site because there were no teeth to the rules.

>Orkut was pretty much killed in the English speaking world by the Brazilian Portuguese speakers which took over any group which was created. They pushed every photography, climbing and Linux group to the point where, as a non-Portuguese speaker, the site became way more noise than signal.

This is the source of the HUEHUEHUE meme https://knowyourmeme.com/memes/huahuehuahue . There's even an academic study on the Brazilian online cultural traits that cause such problems in Orkut! https://www.researchgate.net/publication/265844216_'HUEHUEHU...

A few days ago I was researching a bug I was seeing using with xfce on chrome remote desktop. Apparently this was thoroughly solved in someone's Google+ post that everyone linked to. All I can see now is the Google+ termination notice. Thanks, Google.

Check the Internet Archive. I want to say they grabbed a copy of all the Google+ posts, but I might be wrong.

They did; I just looked up someone's post about USB-C standards the other day

Google was one party in that. The other was the person who choose to gave Google the content to post. When we choose to give content and power to a few, large, centralized organizations, that's on us.

What would you have expected them to do? Would you point to the user if Stack Overflow stopped hosting content? Or GitHub? Before places like imgur, I'd see forum postings linking to broken images hosted on personal sites--so self hosting is unfeasible. Geocities data is still around as well as Usenet postings going back to the 80s.

> Stack Overflow

... which licenses its content with CC by SA 4.0[1] and has a public API.

Other licensing models of content will vary.

[1] https://meta.stackexchange.com/questions/333089/stack-exchan...

This is an important point. Someone else is allowed to use the StackOverflow content and likely would if StackOverflow was turned off.

I do think that is worth noting, but it is (mostly) separate from the original point. It doesn't matter if the copyright is open if the content disappears.

At least in the U.S., I don't think it's that relevant to the use-cases I've seen. IANAL, but in the 4-factor fair use test a place like Internet Archive rehosting the content to me easily clears 3 of them if the original host goes away.

These days IPFS is getting closer to being a real alternative.

Sad thing was google+ and the control it offered was nice. The tech communities on G+ were wonderful but for the average person they were just too entrenched in facebooks ever growing social iron fist.

What google considers success is not the same as what others consider a success. $10m revenue is huge for a lot of startups.

For google it's just a distraction that needs to be culled.

I seriously doubt that's everyone's first thought. I know my first thought when Google launches a product is: "this will suck and I'm not even going to bother trying it". Experience as trained me to avoid Google products and look for migrations away from things I'm stuck with that they executed well on in the distant past (email, maps, search, browser).

More importantly, how many start ups are already in the field that go out of business because Google uses their resources to undercut or out-advertise the existing start up, only to abandon it after the competitors have all been killed?

The criteria for failure at Google is very different from that for a startup.

For eg. Allo was considered a failure because it had 'only' 10 million DAU in first 8 months. For a startup that would be like hitting a jackpot.

I (and plenty of other people) love and make use of services up until the second they are killed by Apple/Google/etc. Just because a big tech firm doesn't like the product doesn't mean it isn't viable as a smaller business.

You can do that endlessly. The reaction to Stadia could well have been “how could this be any good? OnLive already tried that and failed...”.

Google "failures" can have millions of happy users... if google ejected 10m users, and you can gain say 1/10th of those, 1m, and even 10% paying $5/month that's $500k/month of gross income. Depending on your needs, a well designed system to support 1m users or so could be done under $50-100k/month, leaving $400k/month for staff and profit.

While it may not make sense at Google Scale, it can absolutely make sense for a small business spinoff.

How does one provide migration paths when Google owns the data, licenses, etc. on their servers?

Just one of many ways that Service as a Software Substitute reduces user freedom.

Google will provide you with downloads your data for a lot of their projects: https://takeout.google.com/

Sure but how would that work for Stadia?

With Stadia, this concept probably relates more to game saves more so than games. [0] It's just your data—finding something that can use the data is another story.

That's beside the point, though—my reply, it's parent and it's grandparent were discussing Google products generally, not Stadia specifically.

[0] I realize that Takeout doesn't support Stadia. Though, for two different Stadia titles (Destiny 2's "cross-play" and NBA2K20's "MyPlayer"), I was prompted to log into a publisher account where my data could be linked/stored or something.

That would be true if you're thinking of Stadia as a subscription to get access to an all you can eat buffet of games (ie Netflix for games) but that's not the primary model proposed. The primary Stadia purchase model is that you buy games on Stadia and then get "free" unlimited streaming of them. In that case if they were to shutdown the user has to get something back, preferably the game...

> In that case if they were to shutdown the user has to get something back, preferably the game...

Legally or ethically?

But for stadia, where the game licenses, executables, and probably save games probably can't be exported legally, how does one provide a migration paths once Google inevitably says "servers are shutting down in three months. You will lose access to everything on that date. We will give you a month free or something that in no way makes up for the service shutting down and you losing everything"

Well, what will happen when Google Play Music (or Spotify or Apple Music's subscription store or...) inevitably announces a shutdown in 3 months?

Spotify's been running strong for like 13 years, GPM is about to turn 10, etc. None of those people have been bitten yet, and there's literally hundreds of millions of them.

Google Play Music/Spotify/Apple Music is next to free to run, it's basically just a CDN on their end. There's almost no user data that didn't come from user machines originally.

Stadia has all the user data on the backend, _and_ is expensive to run since all the processing happens on their end too.

Reading spotify's most recent filing, there was an increase in its compute costs of ~25 million dollars in 3Q2019 when compared to 3Q2018, mentioned in a footnote. In other words, a compute cost increase of $100 million a year was a footnote. That was an increase of about 1.5% of their gross operating income. The full hosting costs are not public, but we're easily talking hundreds of millions a quarter. Practically free?

So, an increase of about $1/yr/user? Including I'm sure all of the money they're wasting training half baked ML models? Yeah, that's pretty damn close to free.

Now compare that to stadia which'll probably be dedicating high CPU and GPU to each logged in user, in addition to the low latency video compression hardware they're pretty much guaranteed to have?

Google Play Music IS shutting down. Anyday now ... probably in a year max.

They say they won't until YouTube music has feature parity but I don't believe it.

I may sound bitter ...

> Google Play Music IS shutting down

Well, sort of. But relevant to the original question posed: are users of GPM losing their suscribed content? No.

Depends if the catalogs are the same or not (currently not) and if they allow to upload your music on YTM (currently not).

I think the GDPR makes it illegal to not allow exporting save games. Resolving that conflict would be Google's problem.

That would be fine under GDPR actually.

Why do you think article 20 doesn't apply here?

https://gdpr-info.eu/art-20-gdpr/

Except when it doesnt work and there is no way to report it/contact someone. Takeout was never able to return my YT comments.

For our favorite example, Google Reader, you could export your list of feeds, and import them into (e.g.) Newsblur.

But that can't apply to stadia.

It can; you have to buy the games on Stadia. _Hopefully_, there will be a way to export those licenses out of Stadia.

Can you think of any other system like that which allows you to export licenses to games? AFAIK, that's unprecedented in the industry, and explicitly against the contracts I've seen.

Edit: Steam will let you _import_ a CD key, but that's the closest I can think of, and there's no way to export once it's in steam.

When the Ultraviolet movie service shutdown they had some mechanism to prevent users losing their purchased content. I don't know how it worked exactly but ultimately it must have been some kind of license transfer. I don't think it's a huge stretch to imagine something similar being applied to video games.

Ultraviolet wasn't a service really AFAIK, it was a DRM scheme that brokered licenses to other services. those other services could continue running off of the cached licenses, but there's no way to re auth licenses for Ultraviolet works you have but haven't registered yet.

Yeah, I'd be surprised if they'd give anything more than a refund, and probably only a partial one. It isn't really practical to do anything else for a service like this.

Well. They just announced Google Cloud Print's death [1] so, anyone interested?

[1] https://9to5google.com/2019/11/21/google-cloud-print-dead-20...

I seem to remember that Google Cloud Print was the only way you were supposed to print on early Chromebooks.

At least the current Chromebooks let you print on a networked printer.

Sunset Chasers™

Just dont sell the startup to google again and keep building the same product over and over again. :)

The worlds first recursive startup.

Become Trillionaire??!!

Tell that to Craig Walker[1]:

* Founds telephony company Dialpad, sells to Yahoo. (I think it was the basis of Yahoo's search-via-phone-call service.)

* Founds telephony company Grand Central, sells to Google, is basis of Google Voice.

* Founds telephony company Dialpad (he bought back the name and domain).

[1] https://www.businessinsider.com/google-voice-founders-raised...

That only works for products people actually like. I can think of maybe one product where this was a good model.

Google Reader?

Exactly

People liked Google Inbox too; that’s two including Google Reader.

They remove you from search results and you go bankrupt.

When I search for rss reader on Google, Feedly is the second result right under a roundup article listing Google Reader alternatives.

https://protonmail.com/blog/search-risk-google/

That's a competitor to a product that Google is very clearly not shutting down.

Your post reminds me of those occasional posts where an entrepreneur will post something like: I started a company and now Google has built a near exact copy. Something in the past the entrepreneur should have been worried about. Now, I agree with you: Sit back and wait for Google to pull it, and profit.

idlewords did something similar with pinboard.in, only

1. It was Yahoo (del.icio.us) not Google and

2. I think he didn't start until at a later stage.

(I'm an happy early user of pinboard.in)

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