Google’s Spring Clean!
As of the 31st July 2013 Google Reader will be retired having been a part of the Google suite of products since 2005. The Reader is a news aggregator relying on news syndication technology (RSS) to pull information from websites’ news feeds and is used by many thousands of websites who depend on the service to power their news. The reason behind the decision is that apparently usage has declined and that Google are focusing energy on fewer products.
This makes me sad….there goes my one stop digital news stand. I probably don’t use it as much as I did a few years ago but I still value the tool. However let’s be honest, the gap will soon be filled with start ups, and clear the way for clever products. Newsblur has been getting some good press recently.
There is already a petition under way on change.org amassing over 127,000 signatures to stop the wheels in motion, but for those wanting to export your data in advance you can use Google Takeout. Other closures announced included Google Voice App for Blackberry, Snapseed Desktop and Google Cloud Connect.
