Microsoft was everyone’s favorite Evil Empire, but now Google is earning that nickname. Every time the search giant shuts down a service, it garners new bad sentiment amongst its user base. It started with Google Wave, which never had a big user base to begin with. Google Wave’s demise was widely reported because it was touted as the “Wave” of the future of collaboration. However, there wasn’t much bad sentiment about that decision because Wave wasn’t around long. In September 2011, Google announced it was doing some spring cleaning and shut down 10 services, including Notebook. I remember some user backlash with Notebook being shut down, but it didn’t last long because Google had Docs as alternative. Fast forward a bit and Google has announced a second spring of cleaning. This time though Google has unleashed a huge user backlash against it, leading one website to call it GoogleReaderpocalypse. When I first saw the news popping up in my Facebook newsfeed, I was upset and disappointed. I’m subscribed to over 100 RSS feeds in Google Reader and have no idea how I’d be able to follow them all with a good RSS feed reader.
On Twitter sup3rmark quipped:
Being a product manager for a software company though, I get it. I understand the decision. It may have a devoted userbase, but the user base for Reader Base isn’t big or growing. This is what Google says in their announcement:
We launched Google Reader in 2005 in an effort to make it easy for people to discover and keep tabs on their favorite websites. While the product has a loyal following, over the years usage has declined. So, on July 1, 2013, we will retire Google Reader.
That doesn’t mean that that loyal following has to like it. The announcement also says that, “Users and developers interested in RSS alternatives can export their data, including their subscriptions, with Google Takeout.” A number of alternatives do exist, including Feedly and Flipboard. Both of those sites are touting how easy it is or will be to transition to their services. The only problem is these alternatives are being crushed under the new traffic. Feedly’s website is not responding and is returning an HTTP 503 error:
Some products that Google has sunsetted didn’t surprise me. This one does surprise me though and leads me to wonder what other products are on the future chopping block. The desktop version of Picasa hasn’t been updated since 2011, so it’s already in maintenance mode. There are alternatives to Picasa, and the picture storage site is slowly and inexorably merging with Google+, leading many to believe it will likely be gone one day without any fanfare.
Google Voice was last updated in May 2012. If Google Voice is killed off, that may actually be the twisting knife that turns Google into the Evil Empire. Fellow Techcitement writer Yoni Gross disagrees, and pointed out that:
Voice isn’t a product that exists for itself; it’s a product that exists to support something else. The reason Android has the best voice recognition in mobile is because Google gets tons of input from Voice to learn from.
Gross may be right. On the other hand, I’d have likely said almost the same thing about Reader even a few days ago.
*sigh* Unfortunately, I was unaware of the awesome that is Google Reader until I started seeing people talking about it in the last month or so. “Oh! That’s awesome, I’d actually be able to read all the blog things that are scattered across so many services now… oh.. cancelled. >_< Nevermind…"