Google is doing yet another spring cleaning, as part of it it is killing several services that are not of it’s interest any more, the most notable of the list is Google Reader. Reader is one of the good products for catching up on RSS feeds, I personally use this and it is sad to see it go like this.
Google Reader released in 2005 is a popular RSS reader once with it’s social features, once Google has taken out the Social features it’s charm has lose and some of the users abandoned it as they moved to other social sites for news consumption.
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. Users and developers interested in RSS alternatives can export their data, including their subscriptions, with Google Takeout over the course of the next four months.
Google announced on it’s blog that a total of 70 features or services were closed down since they started spring cleaning in 2011. They killed iGoogle, Google Mini and others in 2012. The list of other services that being killed in the latest round of spring cleaning include GUI Builder and five UiApp Widgets, CalDAV API (this will be available for whitelisted developers), Google Building Maker, Google Cloud Connect, Google Voice App for BlackBerry, Search API for Shopping, Snapseed Desktop for Mac and Windows along with the Google Reader.
So if you want to take back your RSS feeds from Google Reader you can do so using Google Takeout feature, to take a backup go to Settings –> Export/Import tab in Google Reader.
All is not lost, there are some other great services that can be useful, for example Feedly, they are already announced a seamless transition from Google Reader to their service.
Google announced today that they will be shutting down Google Reader. This is something we have been expecting for some time: We have been working on a project called Normandy which is a Feedly clone of the Google Reader API – running on Google App Engine. When Google Reader shuts down, feedly will seamlessly transition to the Normandy back end. So if you are a Google Reader user and using feedly, you are covered: the transition will be seamless.
