Hacker News Reader

Are you even responding to the article? Because it seems like you've completely missed the point.

This is a discussion of the trend we increasingly see of big companies abandoning interoperability in favor of their own locked down protocols, APIs, etc. That's why the article is titled "Lockdown".

Marco nailed it with his closing statement: "We need to keep pushing forward without them, and do what we’ve always done before: route around the obstructions and maintain what’s great about the web. Keep building and supporting new tools, technologies, and platforms to empower independence, interoperability, and web property ownership."

If you're arguing against that, honestly, I'm going to straight up now call you wrong.

The issue here isn't so much entitlement, as it is interoperability. And, ironically, I think Marco's assessment is that, from a game-theoretic-approach, what Facebook/Twitter/Google are doing, in locking down their environments, and making sure that user (meta)data isn't easily accessible from outside the ecosystem, is entirely logical.

He just doesn't want to play that game.

His article is a call to action, basically saying, "If we want an open web, we'll have to (continue to) build it."

> "If we want an open web, we'll have to (continue to) build it."

That should be totally obvious to everyone. The web was nice and open when ads ruled the world, but now companies -- the same ones that pay our salaries either directly or by proxy -- have to make money to pay those salaries in ways that aren't display ads.

Google/FB/Twitter/etc have plenty of ways to get data out of their systems via API. If you don't want to use a proprietary API to get the data out then don't put the data in proprietary systems.

You want an open web? Great. I'll make a response that's common in f/oss: submit a patch. It takes a lot of volunteer hours to do. I don't mean to be too snarky, but stuff like this grinds my gears:

> That world formed the web’s foundations — without that world to build on, Google, Facebook, and Twitter couldn’t exist. But they’ve now grown so large that everything from that web-native world is now a threat to them...

Right, right, they stood on the shoulders of giants and whatever. But guess what, your curated news feeds and carefully cultivated twitter feeds and everything else -- they all cost someone somewhere something to build, money or time or both, and without that world to build on, you wouldn't have them.

I forgot what my point was. Rant /off.

If I had my own discussion site, I'd permaban anyone who used that fucking word.

Unless someone is demanding legislation to force Google to keep Reader alive, stop with the entitlement bullshit. We are entitled to dislike business models and approaches, we are entitled to criticize them, and we are entitled to not use projects from companies which follow them.

You're right. But you're not entitled to Google Reader. So stop complaining about it and upvoting posts that complain about it.

You didn't really read the OP, did you? =]

Edit: If you did, and that's your takeaway, I think you started with a predefined notion about its content. Please read it again and try to forget about reader. Reader is not the point. (I'm not the author btw ;)

The GP complains about the entitlement directed towards the shutdown of Reader. The OP complains about the word entitlement being used at all and I agree with him, except that the GP is right that no one is entitled to Reader. I then go on to say that people should stop complaining about it.

I think the type of entitlement the OP is talking about goes far beyond your examples. It's one think to dislike a company and criticize its decisions, but it's another thing entirely to say they have an "ethical responsibility" to keep old products alive, which some in this thread are doing. Google owes you nothing as a user and your more then welcome to leave their platform as I'm sure a statistically insignificant amount of people did after Reader got shut down.

People used to like, if not love Google because they were about the free and open web. Many hackers would openly evangelize Google products and services because they were such a great company. Moves like this make it clear that they're becoming ever more concerned with the corporate agenda (pushing G+ in this case) than the hacker spirit.

One issue in this specific case might be that Google has way more than enough money to keep Reader alive, whereas many people on HN see their own startups fail due to financial troubles, and if they do make it to an exit their products are often killed by acquihires. Wealth is wasted on the wealthy and all that.

It feels like a betrayal because we thought Google shared our values. Really I don't think this is about entitlement at all. Using that word in this context amounts to shaming people about the anger they feel over a breach of trust. Entitlement is more like having your parents fly in to demand the university raise one of your grades so you can get in to medical school.

Is it possible there is a world where Google does share our values but also knows when to kill off products they don't care about?

Ok, so the particular value I'm thinking of is don't kill off tools that a broad spectrum of hackers and non-hackers alike care about unless truly necessary. There are obviously shared values besides that one, and it's unrealistic to paint any organization as all good or all bad.

>Moves like this make it clear that they're becoming ever more concerned with the corporate agenda (pushing G+ in this case) than the hacker spirit.

The frustrating thing for some of us was that this is how it has always been and trying to point it out to people just got you shouted down. Google has always been about making money, what else? Watching otherwise intelligent hackers get so genuinely bamboozled by a simple motto has been surprising, to say the least.

Yeah, it's not a new thing, but I wouldn't say always. Like many of us I've been using Google for its entire lifetime. The motto got introduced at around the halfway mark in 2005 or 2006 if I remember correctly. That was also the time the censorship in China scandal erupted. I think before this there was less concern about their motivations, but I may just be misremembering.

I've been around for the whole lifetime as well and what I remember was technical people gushing all over google for every little thing. I don't remember when the motto came out but I remember that being the point where I knew I didn't like google anymore: to me that sort of thing is just blatant manipulation, which is intelligence-insulting.

We're on the same page. Honestly I'm not even that upset about Reader, I mean it's hardly a surprise.

I looked it up and they announced the motto with the IPO in 2004. Sometimes I think I compare their actions now to my expectations of the pre-IPO company; it doesn't really make sense.

Well, there is making money and making money. What's particularly frustrating and different about this one is that they used to be smart about it, but now they have deliberately destroyed a useful service with a fanatical following in favor of corporate buzzword dream that so far appears to be dead on arrival just like its two predecessors. A few years before that, they made a name making money off of something that actually was useful and disruptive.

I would have paid for it. They didn't ask. Because the problem here is not them making a product choice, it's them blatantly not giving a shit.

Also, I hate, hate, hate this line of argument. It gets trotted out every time an immensely powerful corporation does something that upsets people. It's universal applicability makes it universally pointless.

My friends aren't entitled to anything from me either. But if I fail to show up for something where I said I'd show up, they're going to bitch, and I am perfectly fine with that.

Your analogy is definitely misleading.

> if I fail to show up for something where I said I'd show up, they're going to bitch

This never happened. It's more like, "if I decide to stop showing up because it no longer benefits me and give my friends a month's notice, they're going to bitch." Sure, that's true, but it seriously doesn't make you evil or mean the end of all friendships ever like Marco would make it seem. It just doesn't work like that.

Also, If something is universally applicable, it might have a nugget of truth somewhere, by the way.

Because of trust. When Google started reader, and more importantly, when they put the sign out front saying "come hither for a hassle free web RSS client that keeps a backup of all the feeds you visit even if they go down and everyone said "hells yeah" because it was from a web supergiant and those don't very often go under since 2001.

So we got dependent. And they pulled the rug out. People only got dependent on the assumption it would be persistent. Google's entire business is making things that don't make them money but give them more avenues for ads. And your freaking news feed from Google is the best place I can imagine for targeted advertising and to figure out a users browsing habits. My emails are stuffed with spam, my google searches could be anyone, but you can reliably say I'm browsing my reader feeds and I'm interested in the articles I am opening and those are the ultimate target for advertising.

I'd say something about how social networks factor in, but I don't use any them (or Twitter) so I could care less. But I highly doubt that Google got its desired outcome from killing Reader - they lost a vast swathe of technical users and lost confidence from even more, and they won't see these people move over to consuming content on Google Plus because they don't give a crap how many dog treats the neighbors dog ate yesterday, they care about xkcd strips or gamasutra article feeds. You get a wall of shit on Google+ that you can at least curate in the RSS world. Why I would ever want to use it I have no idea. If I want to talk or interact with people, I'll use XMPP or SMTP. If I want to consume textual or image based media with consistent publication, I'll use RSS. Notice how I keep quoting protocols - because they are open and interoperable. I can expect other people to be ably to reliably target said protocols and distribute their content to anyone that wants it because you have a myriad of tools to access them. That share on G+ button only works with G+, and like the article said, Google wants you stuck on their services.

So I switched the default search engine on my grandparents, mother, cousins, and neighbors to duckduckgo. I'm looking for free web email services that compete with gmail to drop that too, because who knows when Google will rip that rug out from under us as well. "Why are you sending emails? Just send G+ messages! You are all on G+ right? It is expensive to keep a copy of all those email attachments!"

It's more about companies taking an open platform, co-opting it's userbase with a good solution, and then kill or stagnate the platform in one way or another...

Microsoft did something similar with IE back in the day: it was better than Netscape and it quickly dominated, but then they kept adding proprietary hooks (ActiveX etc) and the open web started to stagnate - until Firefox saved the day with a faster, more secure alternative that slowly gained back hard-won market share.

I don't think this phenomenon of hurting open platforms is necessarily intentional, perhaps it's a side-effect near-monopoly products in a given space.

With great power comes great responsibility.

I'm sorry, but it is true.

It is worth noting that Google did not start charging a monthly fee for Reader. If they had, I suspect the vast majority of users - including API users - would have gladly paid for it. Rather, they pulled the plug completely, and the only reason they did that was because they simply did not give a shit. It was an utterly disrespectful thing to do to users who came to rely on the service.

There's also the fact that Reader crushed most of its competition after it came out[1]. It was like a Walmart that opened smack in the middle of a town - none of the smaller shops could compete with it and they closed. In the case of Reader, this was okay with most people, since it was free at the time. But then Google said, "welp, this isn't making us any money" and shut it down. Too bad the noteworthy competitors were long gone by then. That's the absurdity of this whole thing.

To go back to the Walmart example, it's like a Walmart that comes into town, forces the smaller shops to close, and then leaves town a few years later. Where will the townspeople do their shopping now?

I know it isn't a perfect analogy, but I think it is accurate enough to get the point across: if you come out with a free service and end up displacing everyone else in the market, then you have an ethical responsibility to at least try to continue the service in some shape or form. Start charging for it and explain why you are doing it. Some may complain but most will understand and agree to pay since they have come to appreciate it and rely on it. Or serve ads, somehow. But whatever you do, don't just shut it down citing lack of profits. Because that just makes you look like a tool.

[1]Interestingly enough, while I was searching past HN submissions to find that story, I came across this one from 4 years ago, titled "Is Google Reader next on the chopping block?" The article itself seems gone but the comments are still there: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=435555. The comments themselves are chilling, but even more so because of their similarities to the ones on the more recent "With Google Reader gone, is Google Scholar next?" submission: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=5434021

> if you come out with a free service and end up displacing everyone else in the market, then you have an ethical responsibility to at least try to continue the service in some shape or form

This is exactly the kind of entitlement the OP mentions. Also, how would you know your product you wanted to release was going to displace everyone in the market? Does this apply only to large companies or is it small shops as well? What if they lose interest or what if they lost users when they add this magically and universally loved paid solution? There is no such ethical responsibility and they shouldn't be because it is ridiculous. Google shutting down Reader might make them tools, but the precedence you're trying to establish with ideology like this is far worse than that.

>>Also, how would you know your product you wanted to release was going to displace everyone in the market? Does this apply only to large companies or is it small shops as well?

This is a funny question because I thought I was very clear in my original post. I said with great power comes great responsibility. The kind of great power I am talking about here is the kind Google has as one of the world's largest (read: richest) and most influential tech giants.

>>Google shutting down Reader might make them tools, but the precedence you're trying to establish with ideology like this is far worse than that.

This is ironic, because Google Reader was shut down not because it cost Google any noticeable amount of money to operate, but because it didn't fit some Google exec's ideological vision. The precedence I'm trying to establish is at least ethical in the sense that it puts the well-being of users first.

>>The precedence I'm trying to establish is at least ethical in the sense that it puts the well-being of users first.

Companies have a responsibility to put the desires of their owners first, and as a public company that generally means profits. This is hardly an ideological vision, but more of a long term business plan, and even if reader was costing them nothing to maintain it still doesn't fit that plan.

Ok, so it's just if Google does it then, because they are the only ones with "great power?" Although "with great power comes great responsibility" is a cool catch line, it's extremely nebulous, especially as presented. What you are saying is that if any company provides a widely used product, say like Instapaper, they are ethical mandated to continue providing it, etc. Why would I create something for fun then, if I'm morally obligated to dedicate to it in the off chance it becomes popular? When can products close down?

Also, your solution is hardly more ethical than theirs, even if it puts the "well-being" of users first. It's just more binding than what already exists. In my opinion, it was perfectly ethical that Google gave its users a good head's up to the situation and that they even provide a way to find other services that might replace Reader. It's not like it randomly stopped existing one day or like they promised it would always be there. No moral code was broken and no ethics or rights were trampled on. It just sucks and you have every right to be upset. To be a proponent of "you either support it forever in some way or you're (ethically? morally?) evil" isn't really helping though.

>>What you are saying is that if any company provides a widely used product, say like Instapaper, they are ethical mandated to continue providing it, etc. Why would I create something for fun then, if I'm morally obligated to dedicate to it in the off chance it becomes popular? When can products close down?

If you want to close down a product, you can at least open-source it. Which is another thing Google could have done with Reader. It would have given another party the opportunity to pick it up and develop/maintain it.

Honestly, I would be surprised if this wasn't definitely considered by Google before closing Reader. The thing is, when the tool is so closely tied in to Google's internal infrastructure, it would take a large effort to open-source it. IMO, it probably wasn't worth the trouble.

So there's a void in the market ready to be filled?

Nope. It's more like Googlewater came into town, made a great deal with the mayor to run the water service. Then poisoned the well and left town. Now no one trusts tap water, but Googlewater is more than happy to sell you bottled water from their vending machines.

Even though it's possible for another watercompany to come in and clean up the well, too many people distrust well water, and hell, all the cool kids are now drinking bottled Googlewater.

I love outlandish analogies like this (I could totally picture the Dr. Seuss-style cartoon in my head), but do people really "distrust" RSS/Atom now?

No, they don't distrust RSS/Atom, they distrust any service that springs up to provide Reader like services. For users who have multiple devices, Reader was an incredibly easy way to sync state. Whether other companies can be profitable providing similar services remains to be seen.

Stripped down to essentials, this would be an online list of URLs, with appropriate auth (and maybe some representation of when something was read?). Such a service couldn't serve adds, but it wouldn't cost as much to run as a G-Reader or NewsBlur. Actually, if the clients were smart enough the described service could just be another RSS feed, which would take pushes from clients rather than polling sites. Either clients or other servers could then integrate this "read" feed with the other feeds.

This separation of concerns makes it clear that more than one trust issue is implicated. I think you're saying that users might distrust a service's permanence (frankly all services should be suspect on this point), but it seems other users might distrust a service's discretion with their reading habits. By separating this aspect of RSS consumption from all others, so that e.g. the really paranoid could just run their own service, everybody would be able to arrange a suitable situation.

Absolutely right. Corporations should never be criticized. Only governments.

You're responding to an entirely different complaint than the one that was made.

It's not about entitlement but about fighting for the type of web you want.

> fighting

Let's not get too carried away here. It's about doing the same thing we've been doing for the history of the web. Hackers will continue to hack on stuff and find holes, etc, etc. Content curators will get use to APIs and integrate these services into their own. As it has always been. There's no fight to be had, only some latent bitterness over Google Reader and RSS and privacy.

Entitlement. I has it.

Sorry, that's a cheap shot. This isn't about entitlement or whether services are free or paid, or even about Google reader specifically, and it's certainly not related to entitled users on HN.

From the article: That world formed the web’s foundations — without that world to build on, Google, Facebook, and Twitter couldn’t exist. But they’ve now grown so large that everything from that web-native world is now a threat to them, and they want to shut it down. “Sunset” it. “Clean it up.” “Retire” it. Get it out of the way so they can get even bigger and build even bigger proprietary barriers to anyone trying to claim their territory.

He's talking about whether we should accept the ongoing corralling of the web into walled gardens where there is one gatekeeper and landowner, and everyone else producing goods for the public is a sharecropper, and the public can only buy what's on offer - take it or leave it. There's a real danger in building or living inside the walls of these corporate communities (twitter, Facebook, Google+, whatever Apple's equivalent to eWorld is called these days). The tension between large corporations and their users (free or not) is of course as old as the hills, but that doesn't mean we should give in to their latest attempts to lock users into one ecosystem that they control.

This instinct is why Apple prevents Amazon from selling on its iOS platform, why Amazon wants to be the world marketplace for everything, why Facebook encourages people to put their online lives exclusively behind a FB login, and why Google wants to channel everything through G+ and require an account for any activity on the web. It's a natural instinct for corporations, but not one we should accept or buy into.

There is something to your last statement, in that this behaviour seems to be tied to the size of a corporation - once it grows to a certain size, priorities inevitably change, the staff changes, and the drive to seek rent from customers and partners becomes overwhelming. So in a sense this is a natural cycle that it's difficult or impossible for companies to avoid. That doesn't meant that we as customers and developers should acquiesce to the brave new world, and start building our products or lives around services like reader - as many have found out this week, that's a bad strategy, because large corporations don't really care about the service, or the value to users, all they care about is the lock-in.

That means we can happily use these services, but should always remember they may be withdrawn by fiat, and never build a business on them - for example if you build your company dependent on a twitter, FB or G+ login, don't be surprised in a few years when they start to charge for the privilege of growing on their land. The open web is a better place to build in my opinion, it's hard to get started, but infinitely more rewarding to have your own space, as a reader or as a developer.