Google has announced yet another spring cleaning of its various services, and this time around, the company is giving the axe to its Google Reader RSS aggregator. The service, which originally launched back in 2005, will be officially put out to pasture on July 1st, 2013. Reader has gone through a number of iterations, but it had not been significantly updated in a long time. The last time that Google updated the product, it built in integration for the Google+ social network and removed Reader's own native sharing service, causing a bit of a backlash with die hard users. Google is offering users a way to export their Reader content, including lists of users that they follow and starred and liked articles.
In addition to killing off Reader, beginning next week Google is ending support for the Google Voice app for BlackBerry smartphones, instead pointing users toward the HTML5 webapp. The company will no longer sell or update the desktop versions of its Snapseed photo editing app, and a number of other developer APIs are also being killed off.
While a number of users will be affected by the end of Google Voice for BlackBerry and the various API services, the biggest blow for many will be the disappearance of Google Reader. Google says it is killing it off because "usage of Google Reader has declined, and as a company we’re pouring all of our energy into fewer products." As one of the most popular RSS aggregators around, the death of Google Reader could spell doom for the RSS protocol itself, which has seen waning popularity since the rise of social sharing services. Additionally, there is a rather healthy ecosystem of third party apps for mobile devices that use Google Reader to synchronize news articles. These apps will have to find another method of importing articles from the web or just fade off into the sunset when Reader meets its ultimate demise. Either way, we'll be pouring some out for Google Reader come July 1st, and be looking for new way to keep up with our favorite sites on the web in the meantime.
Comments
WHY
By gubidi on 03.13.13 7:16pm
This is crossing the evil line, Google.
By Saad073 on 03.13.13 7:30pm
I use it EVERY DAY. Sad Face.
By Matthew Ary on 03.13.13 7:32pm
Likewise. This pretty much ruined my day/month/year/life.
Seriously, what the hell Google?
By fierywater on 03.13.13 7:35pm
Can’t you just move to another RSS reader?
By straydog on 03.13.13 7:41pm
there’s no equivalent of the same quality.
By quadrige on 03.13.13 7:41pm
b—tch, please
Netvibes
By thisismynextaccount on 03.13.13 8:08pm
Not as good if you have a large number of feeds.
By ravnotraj on 03.13.13 8:09pm
have more than 100 feeds, has the same view that google reader, but i preffer widget style
By thisismynextaccount on 03.13.13 8:10pm
By EngadgetRefugee on 03.13.13 9:27pm
I’m so mad right now…I along with other people use this everyday.
And people talk so bad about Apple???? This is absolute CRAP that google is doing this.
By iFandroid on 03.13.13 9:28pm
I am now officially waiting for the day Google spring cleans Google Search, Gmail and Android. I seriously can’t find enough swear words right now. I will never recommend Google Bookmarks to anybody again, since it will probably be next. Google Reader would have been an easy way to harvest more data from users but Google blew it.
By JohannesZ on 03.13.13 9:31pm
I feel you.
By MrJspeed on 03.14.13 2:34pm
They can’t use into push ads as easily I imagine.
By Lomifeh on 03.14.13 11:38pm
Yes. All five of you should rebel and boycott Google.
By VoxMediaUser1083125 on 03.14.13 12:34am
Essentially. Here’s Google: “Dear Nerds, We don’t need you any more, so suck it. Love Google”
By VorJoshigan on 03.14.13 9:09am
By Leica_Virgin on 03.14.13 4:28am
no comment.
By JohannesZ on 03.13.13 9:29pm
Well “no comment” is a comment.
By LebronJamesFanboy on 03.13.13 9:31pm
True. Should have been comment
By darwiniandude on 03.13.13 10:29pm
verge can you give us a reminder a week before it’s cancelled so we can all rush to some alternatives that you kindly research for us? <3 thanks. cry
By VoxMediaUser612879 on 03.13.13 10:37pm
http://ifgooglekillsreader.tumblr.com/
By vzhang on 03.14.13 1:52pm
So where’s that Netvibes Android application? Oh that’s right, there isn’t one.
By oscillik on 03.13.13 8:30pm
Feddly
Ont their blog:
If you are a Google Reader, give feedly a try before July 1st, and you will be able to migrate seamlesly:
Feedly for iOS
Feedly for Android
Feedly for Chrome
Feedly for Firefox
By javerga on 03.13.13 9:58pm
“We have been working on a project called Normandy which is a feedly clone of the Google Reader API – running on Google App Engine. When Google Reader shuts down, feedly will seamlessly transition to the Normandy back end.”
From Feddly blog.
By javerga on 03.13.13 10:11pm