My morning routine for work is simple:
• Respond to email
• Check my Google Reader

Those two things always happen right away. Well, it seems Google will force me to find a new morning routine. The company announced its Google Reader service will cease all operations this summer. Gone. It’s going away.

I follow more than 300 blogs in my Google Reader related to book publishing, journalism and trading cards. That may seem like a lot of blogs, but when you consider that not all of these blogs update every day, it’s really not. I seem to always have ,ore than enough time to skim through the topics, and to find something of interest.

Reader was established in 2005. Wired gives a great run down on the history of Reader from its inception to the subsequent changes.

Reader was probably one of the best social media outposts in the last 10 years with the ability to comment and share with friends—until Google removed those assets.

I didn’t use this service strictly for fun—I used it to monitor what was going on in the world I wrote about. Without a good alternative, I can definitely see this hampering some of my workflow, as I’ll have to seek out each … individual … blog.

Maybe it wasn’t a tool used by everyday social media addicts, but it was something that many used as a lifeblood to track information.

I hope Google reconsiders. Which it won’t. And I hope someone puts out a great alternative.

NO COMMENTS

  1. I’d just switched to using Google Reader through a link to the Reeder application.

    I’ve now switched to NetNewstWire, which I find to be superior, although perhaps I just didn’t have time to use all the features of Google Reader.

    But I’m sure you won’t need to go back to checking individual blogs! There are lots of RSS feed readers out there. Transferring your feed list from google reader is fairly straightforward.

  2. Alas, this illustrates one of my Rules for Computers–never trust Google to keep a service around. They’re not to be depended on for lifestyle-critical applications. A Google service can be killed at any time. At least we have a little over three months to find a replacement.

  3. I’ve been using Reader since I was in the service (back in ’07) and this announcement was like a slap in the face from Google. My colleagues say I’m old fashioned for using Reader and that I should be using an app like Flipboard or Pulse. Oh well. It was nice while it lasted.

  4. Sorry to disappoint Steve, but where do you think FeedDemon gets its content? That’s right, Google Reader. So with that dying, FeedDemon does as well.

    And of course there is absolutely NO reason to read blogs 1 at a time, there are plenty of alternatives out there; I blogged a list of 20, without even trying.

    The main point to take from this situation is that Google is NOT your friend; trust it and you’re an idiot, quite frankly. By all means use their products, but have backup plans in place, because as soon as that tool doesn’t make them money, they will dump it.

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