An open letter.
Thank you Google.
Thank you for giving us a simple, wonderful, effective (and free) RSS aggregator in Google Reader.
The news you are now going to retire the service is sad but not surprising.
Personally, been honoured to have introduced thousands upon thousands of individuals to the platform through my seven years as a social media trainer / masterclass take / speaker. Even a couple of days ago was enabling a group of librarians here in Wellington, NZ to the power of filtering the web and creating your own social media menu.
Of course I’ve tried other services like Yahoo RSS and Netvibes plus also dabbled with a few desktop readers, but you always got me coming back with your minimalist approach and deep integration with other platforms (not to mention a direct distribution channel through email).
Understand you’ll now be focussing your efforts on other services and although we’ll all miss and have to find another RSS aggregator, the closure will spark new players into the game, and for those already providing services, an opportunity to tighten up their offerings. This will be a good thing (although feel for those folks who created apps like Reeder and thers which sync the reader data in to make it work).
It will also move me further away from all my data being routed through you guys—as you and I both know, it’s getting a little creepy nowadays how we used to be users and are now the products being packaged and sold on (without full disclosure of the parties involved).
Thanks again Google for the memories, making me look awesome and keep in touch.