Hacker News Reader

Comment by dudus | Hacker News Reader

Google Reader had an easy and clear migration path to export your data. I can't understand why people keep bashing Google for it. Just take your data to somewhere else. If tomorrow Keep goes away they'll do the same.

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Seriously, I can understand that losing a service like google reader might be very impractical or disappointing but the amount of melodrama that is being shed is amazing, and to be quite frank some people are being quite whiny and entitled.

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.

It's the loss of historical feed data that bothers me most. Sure, I can export the links to the feeds I have subscribed to, but that's the data I could have reconstructed myself.

What exactly are you referring to? If my understanding is correct you're able to export starred content as well.

Google Reader tracked a lot of data about your feed reading habits, including but not limited to:

- 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.

> and to be quite frank some people are being quite whiny and entitled.

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.

Setting aside syncing and caching (which are not trivial with hundreds of feeds), that solution doesn't address the problem of your readers. Google Reader was a social product, connecting readers to sources.

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.

Some people were/are emotionally invested in Reader, and to an extent it was so good that many people were dissuaded from building a better RSS reader.

Then they'll build one now.

It's almost too late to do that. Products that were slowly grinding are now seeing much more traction, and the initial exodus has passed. There may be a second one when it is officially stopped, but it would be difficult to compete with those products that grabbed customers already.

Problem solved then. Other feed readers exist, so what's your point?!

There are other webmail providers, search engines and social networks too. What's your point?

Those haven't just been withdrawn. Google just opened up the feed aggregator space.

There will definitely be a second exodus. People such as myself are waiting to see what "wins out" over the next few months. I'm still adding feeds to my Reader account.

I'm still using reader because I don't care for feedly working as an extension to my browser and the news blur interface doesn't appeal to me. I'm waiting to see if something else pops up that offers the syncing feature of reader with a decent web app.

I agree. I'll also add that TheOldReader is a bit of a pain to add to. You have to search for your feed in another window, then find the RSS or Atom link, then manually copy link to add it as a subscription. That's a lot of stepa. Also, I used their import queue, and nothing has happened for days.

I obviously can take my RSS feeds elsewhere, but: 1) That elsewhere doesn't sync with my iOS Reeder app 2) RSS Caching! Google Reader cached the feeds, so after subscribing I can see older items, which are not in the current state of the feed. That "elsewhere" doesn't necessary have such a feature (especially if it is a new service).

Google Reader had an easy and clear migration path to export your data.

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.

They are doing an update of NetNewsWire, check the website.

Reader is a desktop RSS app and it has been pretty popular app for OSX and iOS.

You probably mean Reeder instead of Reader. It's my favorite RSS app. FWIW, the author has stated the app will continue working after Google Reader disappears. I don't know about the details.

I've been using Vienna[1] on OS X. It's open-source and has a nice interface.

[1] http://www.vienna-rss.org/

We should all start using Google Plus more. Still don't understand why people won't make the switch.

There's not much to do on there. I see image memes that aren't interesting. I scroll down to find a "What's hot" box with some boring thing from the NRA. Why does Google think I want to see anything from the NRA?

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 actually get pretty relevant/entertaining things in my what's hot feed.

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

Google Plus came alive for me when I added a Fraser Cain's shared Science Circle: https://plus.google.com/110701307803962595019/posts/CcPsCorM... There are similarly interesting circles focused on technology, futurism, etc.

Now that I think about it, G+ got less interesting around the same time I culled some shared circles I added when G+ launched. I saw this circle share the other day and added it. Now G+ is interesting again. Weird.

Google Plus isn't a replacement for RSS.

I am subscribed to 100+ RSS feeds that have no corollary in Google+ and likely never will.

You realise there were feed services that went kaput because of Reader[1] and one fine day Google decided to give it an injection. Is it really that difficult to see this happening to sth like Evernote or Simplenote? I mean seeing Google's reach it's very much possible.

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.

> You realise there were feed services that went kaput because of Reader

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?

>>I may just have forgotten them, though (2005 was a long time ago).

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...

The same could be said when they started Google - at the time Altavista was dominant in search. If you're that easily dissuaded, you shouldn't be in startups. There's almost always an existing solution to the problem you're trying to solve.

Altavista wasn't an arm of one of the most powerful, valuable, and influential companies on earth.

No, but at the time, the Internet was also about 1/100th of what it is today and Altavista was still worth about $3bn. It's hard to picture now, but back in 1999 Altavista and Yahoo were towering giants online.

AV was spawned by researchers from DEC in 1995 a full 3 years before Google came on the scene. I'd say Google was the severe underdog at the time.

Bloglines killed themselves when they tried to redesign into a Digg competitor instead of a feed reader.

What is "sth"? Services? Software?

It's "something".

Probably short for "something". See definition #1 here:

http://www.urbandictionary.com/define.php?term=sth

its a terrible shorthand for "something". I always read it as "sith".

I am from India and so I grew up on British English and have stuck to that. I was gifted a Oxford Pocket Dictionary when I was a kid, by an uncle. I practically learned my English with that dictionary, had it till recently when I passed it down to my niece(who is in 5th grade as of now).

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.

Same here in China. I grew up learning English using mostly British textbooks and sth is introduced to us quite early, pretty much like xyz in algebra. I'm actually quite surprised to find out it's perhaps not that common in the US.

In my experience you'd be hard pressed to find 'sth' used in the US (same for sb), most people would type it out to avoid ambiguity with 'south' and other words. In SMS and other short formats, phonetic spellings like 'sumthin' are more common.

I've only ever seen South abbreviated as S, never as sth.

I grew up in England learning English. sth is not very common here either.

Thanks for the explanation. I grew up in the USA, and covered a fair bit of British literature in school, but I've never encountered this usage before.

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