Bring back Google Reader! (o cómo Google mató mi aplicación favorita)

November 2, 2011

Parece ser que no ha sentado muy bien la actualización (me niego a llamarlo mejora) de Google Reader.

Para mí es una aplicación básica, desde la que organizo gran parte de mi actividad en internet, y que ahora tenga que pasar por Google + para poder compartir y recibir contenido de mis contactos es un claro paso atrás.

¿Llevará la obsesión de Google por poner en valor su enésimo intento de red social a poner en peligro alguna otra de sus aplicaciones?

¿Dónde ha quedado el famoso: don´t be evil?

Creo que empezaré a buscar un sustituto para Google Reader, se aceptan sugerencias.

Os dejo con un buen post sobre el tema.

adamlaiacano:

Yesterday, Google removed my single favorite thing about the internet. Google reader was an above-average RSS reader with a functional layout and unmatched sharing/comments features. Now it’s a decent-at-best RSS reader thanks to the horrible new layout, and a few useless json files with some contacts and 4 years worth of shared items.

I was wondering what is left of the Trends page that shows Reader statistics and found this:

169,836 articles over the last 4 years! Here’s what’s missing from these stats:

“You share 3-4 articles per day to the 80ish friends who you’ve approved to view and comment on them”

“The comment threads have inspired one blog and launched 4 friendships.”

“This is 1000% better than any other social network at keeping in touch with your friends in other parts of the world.”

“You now have to sift through 400 posts per week on fffound (not an exaggeration) to find the 2 pictures you like, since Mike and Danny aren’t doing that for you anymore.”

Brian Shih, the former Google Reader PM sums it up best with a comparison to twitter:

[Google] ripped out the ability to consume shared items wholesale from the product. The closest analogue might be if Twitter made it so that 3rd party clients could use the Retweet functionality to push Retweets to a user’s stream — but only allowed you to consume Retweets on twitter.com.

So now that the fun has ended, what are the options?

1. Give in and use Google+

I created a circle called “Reader” today and added all of my old Google Reader friends. The problem is, EVERYTHING these people share on G+ will end up in this stream, and it will only be links to the articles and maybe a quick summary, as opposed to the full text that you would get in Reader. Plus what Brian Shih said in that quote up above.

2. Share everything on tumblr, since that’s easy to do with the bookmarklet

I love tumblr (obviously) but it is designed to be a publishing platform first, a consuming platform/dashboard second, and not great at forum-style interactions. Especially if you want to keep a private blog and therefore can’t enable Disquss .

3. Create a private forum for just you and your friends

This fixes the comments problem, but it’s completely removed from a news-consumption setting. Plus one other advantage of Google Reader is the mixture of friend circles. I like seeing when friends-of-friends comment on items and eventually requesting to follow their shares. This is how Google+ integration should have worked.

4. DIY!

I’m still sort of punk! I programmed my own messageboard in perl back in 2001! So why can’t I take this on!? Because I’m a grown up with a full time job working for a different web company.

4. “Let George do it.”

This seems to be the best bet right now. Some people at The Atlantic Wire seem to be just as pissed off, and they pointed out that some wonderful folks are indeed working on a Google Reader replacement called HiveMined (and they have a tumblr). The screen shots indicate that they’re handing the three important features well: easy to consume, easy to share, easy to discuss.

It’s amazing to me how little Google seems to “get it” anymore. Imagine if all of the ideas and innovations in gmail were actually launched by Yahoo! in 2004 instead of Google. Do you think Google could come up with something competitive in 2011? I don’t.