Blogging 365, Day 73: Google Reader Is Dead

There are a lot of Google services that my life has been perfectly fine without, some dead and some still living for whatever reason.

Google Wave was one of them and something that I (and a lot of other people) could never quite figure out. Much too complicated for something that was supposed to be a collaboration tool.

Then there’s Google+. I have a profile there but rarely check it. I may post something on there now and then but other than that, it’s completely useless to me and I find it hard to believe it has as many users Google claims it does. As per Wikipedia:

As of December 2012, it has a total of 500 million registered users of whom 235 million are active on a monthly basis

Meh. I still think it sucks.

I did, however, enjoy iGoogle which offered widgets to things like Gmail, Google Calendar, etc. I had it as my homepage for a years – until Google decided it would die on November 1, 2013.

One widget that I used all the time was for Google Reader which is where I keep all of my RSS feeds nice and tidy. All of the blogs I’m subscribed to, news feeds, etc. are all in there because it’s so darn easy.

Then today, I got this message when I logged in:

Damn you, Google. Aside from Gmail, Reader is the only other service of yours I actually use and enjoy. Now I’ve got to go and find another way to get all of my news feeds. And so far, I’ve tried most of them and none of them have worked very well nor are free.

Thanks, guys. Maybe it’s just a ploy to get me to use Google+.

Nice try. But it’s not happening.