Hacker News Reader

Comment by ghshephard | Hacker News Reader

My favorite comment from the post:

"And by the way – how is this app strategic for you guys and Reader is not? A little clarity would certainly be appreciated."

I too would love to know what Google is thinking here.

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Everyone assumes that this was a big strategic decision to scrap Reader and ditch RSS. But from what I've heard, it was more of a practical decision to drop an unmaintained project because no one knew how to update it for new backend infrastructure. But I'm sure that they misjudged the importance that people put into Reader. All in all, it seems like a wasted opportunity and a massive amount of lost good will.

That may be true as the reason, but I cannot believe they could misjudge the importance of Reader to its users - they have all the logs and know exactly what the usage is. They just decided they didn't care enough, and could accept the negative publicity.

Maybe they did look at the logs and decided that Reader usage was low enough (at Google scale) that they did not care.

At the very least, by looking at raw numbers, usage probably was pretty low. But the people that used it, used it a lot. I think that they just wanted to get rid of a project that they couldn't maintain anymore and sorely misjudged how vocal the users of it would be.

Keep and Reader are built for different groups of users. Reader was a niche product used by a small (but vocal) subset of all Google users. Keep is a product built for everyone.

It also turns out that Keep will provide them with a LOT more information about users that advertisers would pay through the nose to obtain.

Reader.. not so much.

Reader.. not so much.

How so? Show me someone's blog subscriptions, and then metrics on entries they clicked on, how long they viewed it, and the clicks that they followed, and I could quickly get a very accurate profile of the person.

Assuming people were to ONLY use this for todo lists, that would be infinitely more useful than what feeds and stories a person is interested in. They probably also get a lot of that information already with Google News and Google Analytics.

I suspect there will be a lot more than just todo lists, so the possibilities are really endless.

I'm building something on top of Hangouts, and I had an exchange that this reminded me of.

I was finally connected with a developer evangelist, and I sent an email saying something like "would love to know more about Google's strategic goals with Hangouts".

Her response was "I'm sure you're aware that Google doesn't discuss its strategies outside the company".

What a striking cultural difference from startups, where we're constantly discussing our strategies together.

Google doesn't want anyone to know what they're up to. Ironically, they want to know EVERYTHING about what YOU are up to.

Except apparently which blogs you're reading. But I guess they get that and more from Chrome now.

It ties into Google Now. It's already super convenient for me. Swipe up "Google, note to self, pick up milk". Now I have a TODO.

Combine that with what Google already knows (that I leave work at 5 and drive within half a mile of a grocery store), think about the intelligence they could bring to my Todo list.

(I know lots of people aren't going to like the privacy implications, my comment isn't meant to apologize or touch on that aspect)

How is Now strategic?

Increases appeal of Android devices and provides another advertising opportunity ("find place to eat" -> bam! hyperlocal recommendation. Restaurants would pay significant amounts of money for that type of targeted advertising)

The parent observation is really on the money. Hyperlocal recommendations are very interesting, but _paid_ recommendations are a potential gold mine that I think people are only now starting to catch on to.

What I find particularly interesting about it is the potential to produce genuinely relevant advertising. As a simple example, imagine I ask my smartphone where I can find the nearest fast food joint and it tells me there is a McDonald's around the corner. It might also serve an ad that says there is a Burger King one block further away and if I go there and show the ad I will get free fries and a drink with my sandwich.

There are some very interesting possibilities here that we have only begun to scratch the surface of.

For things like that, such a service makes complete sense. But for things that I spend real money on, I've already developed a filter in my brain to weed out anything that looks like paid shilling. This is why I stopped using Google Shopping after it went paid-only, and why I skip the first page of Google Search when researching products.

Now if they could make this a social thing, where real, authenticated, non-paid people recommend a good place to eat or get my suit tailored, I would be on board. Sadly, there is no money in that sort of service, as Yelp found out pretty quickly.

I find that even for topics related to money the top hits on Google are all completely useless spam. I was looking for information about companies selling software components and just found a bunch of "sellyourappnow.com" offering Fruit Ninja clones for a few hundred bucks.

For whatever reason businesses that love their margins more than their customers find it's much more convenient to astroturf services like Yelp than to actually provide something worth buying.

And services like Yelp always seem to find that it's more lucrative to extort money from businesses in exchange for reorganizing their ratings.

I'd love to have a way for regular people to recommend things that was invulnerable to astroturfing but I have no idea what it would look like.

Stack Exchange gets pretty close, with its robust reputation/moderation system.

The more Google [Now] knows about you, the better it can target you with ads.

The issue at hand is whether Google will later determine that the value gained from this new service is worth the cost. Google Reader allowed Google to collect a lot of incremental info on its users (what they were interested in reading) but wasn't worth the maintenance. Google likes to throw spaghetti on the wall and see if it sticks, despite how this strategy can negatively impact is users.

I always loved the strategy, and previously it didn't always bother me. When they cancelled Google/Gmail Labs, for example, I didn't like it, but I didn't care enough or rely on it enough to have a problem with it.

Perhaps they just had to learn the lesson that spaghetti that sticks is probably best left in place when it has a rabid fan-base.

I'm not finding the exact quote right now, but Sergey always wanted Google to be able to interact with the user and suggest things to them automatically. Google Now is a part of that strategy.

Google's corporate mission is to organize the world's information.

Taken from http://www.google.com/landing/now/

> Google Now gets you just the right information at just the right time.

Google Now extends the mission to include personal information. The plan is to eventually know what you want before you know you want it.

How could that be any more strategic?

One could argue Reader organized information as well.

Reader lets you organize information, not Google for you.

Better kill Calendar then. Can't have us mortals organizing our own schedules.

And Google Drive better get rid of folders. Just have a box you drop files on. If you need them back, hopefully you can figure out a search term to find them. But not using any search operators, those are too much like letting you organize.

Does one mission statement really cover the motivations of a company that has branched out into so many areas? Reader is a huge blow to that mission.

Isn't that why they're consolidating and trimming the business, to be more focused on that mission statement?

In itself, Reader could fit in (as the article by one of the original developers touched on). But for various reasons they never worked this out, or didn't put enough resources on it. So now they pull the plug. A stupid decision for many reasons, but not necessarily from a purely 'strategic' point of view.

One reason I can think of that they never invested deeply in Reader could be that the subset of people using it actively (geeks, information addicts) just wasn't interesting and broad enough to them.

Or perhaps there wasn't a large enough subset of that subset who work at Google. They don't have a use for it internally so there's no way they can dogfood it.

Google's mission seems to have changed. Looks like their focus is now more towards organizing "Personal information" than "World Information".

Google's corporate mission is to sell advertising.

Google Now is killer.

The 'aha' moment for me was when I was visiting New York City: A few hours after my arrival, it told me that a favorite musician of mine was going to perform at a venue close to my location. I would have never known if I didn't have the service.

I'm guessing they knew I liked that artist because of my youtube history (my phone doesn't contain any music). That's cool with me. Oh and if they want to show me an ad for his latest album, instead of the latest One Direction single, I'm cool with that too.

Lots of cynicism/astroturfing towards Google. Maybe they were simply giving away their share of the pie to other, smaller businesses? It's not like there's a shortage of RSS readers out there; it's kind of a trivial thing to build.

The turnoff switch for Reader is an inflection point for Google towards Microsoftization; where they new product launches will be skeptically seen by hackers, and geeks.

I went to my phone, and did a Google spring cleanup yesterday, by deleting all the stuff I didn't use, and thought Google would see a future;

That is good for startups, they may attack Google product segments with ease, and we shall all PR for them and enjoy using them.

No, the de-standardizing of Google Calendar is Microsoftization.

1. Release something that's compatible with another popular thing. 2. Build up a huge following. 3. Remove the compatibility. 4. ??? 5. Profit!

It's the same thing that happened with NT and OS/2 compatibility. I'm not sure if Excel can still deal with Lotus files, but Excel got popular because of its Lotus compatibility.

And in fact, Google did this most specifically to Microsoft.

http://www.zdnet.com/google-drops-exchange-activesync-suppor...

I used it on vacation a lot the other week. Just say "Navigate me to x" or "Directions to y" or "Find the nearest z" and you get it right away in Google Maps/Navigation. Probably my favorite non-passive feature of it.

Then when staying at the hotel, it knows I'm staying there and tells me when I'm driving elsewhere how far away I am from it with traffic and how to go back via a notification.

Other times, if you call a place, like to order carryout, it knows you called it by the telephone number and then gives you a notification of how far away that place is and offers directions.

This kind of thing probably works well in major markets. Last time I used google naviation it took me to a vacant lot half a mile from where I wanted to go. Another time it took me on a convoluted route that included cutting through two private apartment parking lots for a destination that turned out to be literally around the corner and down the road from where I started. This is not uncommon in my part of the US (midwest). I don't use navigation anymore, I look at the maps and pick my own routes.

Just to follow up, I've only really used it in metropolitan areas/suburbs and on long trips where I knew the address ahead of time, so I can't comment on accuracy in rural areas or small towns. Guessing it's similar to your situation though if it's an area not as well traveled.

Google Now is the best thing Google have done yet with the vast swathes of information they collect. Right now, Google Now is the reason to use everything Google.

Now already has an option to update you on a story that you read earlier. I don't see why Reader couldn't play into this.

Also Glass.

Ding ding ding. That's the progression I envision. Next is Google Glass. After that, automobiles with the same integration. I'm both scared and excited to see what Google will be able to do with all the data they have feeding into Now.

This would be the Google Now that doesn't run on my Nexus One? :-)

I guess? The fact that the CM team doesn't even generate 10.1 builds for the Passion is a pretty good indicator that it's too weak. Or HTC won't upgrade the graphics drivers.

That's probably the case, although I'm a bit lost on the distinction between what GN does and the regular reminders from my calendar/mail client etc. It's powerful enough to run maps with little 3d buildings and stuff, so I've never been wholly clear on why it's stuck on Android 2.3.

The Nexus One? It barely has enough on device storage for 2.3 :(

The system partition on the Nexue One is only 145 MB.

I 'upgraded' my Sony Ericsson Xperia Arc S to ICS, and it's absolutely ridiculously bad. I blame Sony for most issues, but the fact is ICS is bigger and uses way too much space for older devices that sold with none. I imagine JB even more so.

On my HP Touchpad though, Jellybean runs like a charm. I think the real reason fragmentation was ever an issue is because so many devices shipped without enough space for apps.

It doesn't help of course that Google and their strategic app partners (see Facebook) assume that every device has a tonne of space (which modern devices do of course) and grow ridiculously big. Chrome and Currents are both unusably big on an older device.

Bit of a ramble, but in short you're getting a much much better experience by not upgrading, unless there's a way to hack that tiny storage partition?

You and me both, browlther. I found a Nexus 7 (thanks, visiting relatives) to go along with my aging Nexus One, and before I even knew what Now was, it figured out my commute (which is by bus, in Chengdu, China), telling me how long it would take that day based on traffic. I was pretty floored, since at that point I thought of the 7 as kind of a toy.

I wish Google Now was that good for me. I've used the same commute since starting to use Google Now months ago, but it keeps telling me to use an alternate route that takes the same time, but has tolls, busier roads and a higher probability of delays. I can't seem to get it to figure out that I won't go that way.

While I can use Google Now on my Galaxy S III, apparently Google doesn't want me using it if I won't do things their way.

It baffles me that everyone is so focused on Evernote when the connection is so obvious (probably deceptively so)

Keep is a feature, Drive is the App (apple/oranges).

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