I'll take the blame for this.
I use Google Reader heavily, but I never go to the web pages. I have native apps on my desktop and mobile devices and just use Reader to keep my subscriptions synced.
No ad views, no service.
I use Google Reader heavily, but I never go to the web pages. I have native apps on my desktop and mobile devices and just use Reader to keep my subscriptions synced.
No ad views, no service.
I find the Google Reader web interface to be dreadful and ugly, so I never go there except to manage my RSS feeds. Third party devs have created newsreader apps so much better than Google did, it's not even funny.
Yeah, but they don't want us as customers, they want to sell us as Soylent Green out the back door.
With this news, the only remaining things I'll use Google for are search, GMail, and some libraries like Guice & Guava.
They could compete with a solid mobile app / desktop app and monetize that. Lots of ways to leverage it against Facebook and Twitter and LinkedIn. All those services are building freaking news aggregators, and Google is killing theirs which is maybe the best and most useful?
It seems really lame and evil.
If an ad supported feed provider fails to add ads to their feed they just do not understand the medium. One of the core ideas in RSS is to avoid visiting all the subscribed sites!
The service itself at that level is comparatively straightforward. Hopefully someone (twentyfivesquares?) will step up and offer a replacement. I'd be willing to pay.