Farewell Google Reader

I can't believe this day has come, but it is here. Last March Google announced that it was going to power down Google Reader. One of its classic spring cleanings. Tons of posts and news talked about it. At the beginning I couldn't believe it but then kind of understood it. Let's be honest not so many people know about RSS and specially RSS clients. These days most people get their news from twitter, G+, FaceBook, etc. I could even say that mostly geeks use RSS and RSS clients now a days in order to get informed, I do :)

Anyways, I woke up this morning and I knew that it was gone but as usual I went to that page and I saw this image :( pretty much the same info you could see on their official blog post

Google Reader

Basically, it says good bye, some other alternatives we can use and that we have until July 15, 2013 to take all our data using Google Takeout.

I still remember the first time I talked about RSS feeds and clients back in 2006 ( Spanish ) since then I pretty much used Google Reader for this purpose but now that it is gone I have been testing couple of alternatives. I am saying alternatives because there is no replacement for it at least according to me. The first in the line is Feedly which has an android client, it uses AppEngine and it has direct import from Google Reader, so far it is good but still it is missing key things for me. It does not have search, for some reason it only shows me feeds just 10 days old, Google Reader used to show one month and I am trying to get used to the UI which sometimes freezes when I go through my feeds. I think it is not scaling very well when you have tons of feeds and users hitting your app, but it uses AppEngine so I guess it is not a server problem. The other alternatives are just not there yet, or do not have android clients which is one of the key things a good RSS client has to have.

Anyways, life has to continue so good bye Google Reader, for sure you will be missed! 

October 7, 2005 to July 1, 2013