Google announced today that it will close its RSS subscription service Google Reader on July 1 this year. Industry insiders believe that this will have a serious impact on a large number of third-party applications that rely on this service.
Spring cleaning of Google
Google said it would shut down its seven-year-old Google Reader, the world's most popular RSS subscription service, due to 'declining usage.'. Google hopes to focus on some of the services with the most users through 'spring cleaning'.
In addition to Google Reader, Google will also discontinue Google building maker, its map modeling tool, its support for BlackBerry version of Google Voice, and shut down other services. But in the spring cleaning, the biggest adjustment is the closure of Google reader. Users can export subscription and other data through Google's takeout service.
The decline of traditional RSS service
In recent years, the use of traditional RSS subscription services has been declining due to the rise of twitter, flippboard and other applications. But services like Google Reader are still very useful for users who pay attention to a lot of websites and web information flow.
As early as 2011, Google adjusted Google Reader and integrated it into its social network Google +. At that time, Google also disabled a number of important functions, such as sharing Google Reader content with other users. Subsequently, more than 10000 users launched a petition to restore these functions, but Google did not respond.
Over the past 18 months, some software developers and experts have repeatedly warned that the user and developer community should not rely too much on Google Reader, in part because the product is clearly no longer Google's core product.
Impact on third party applications
In addition to Google Reader web client and official applications, for a large number of third-party applications relying on Google Reader subscription and synchronization information, the shutdown of this service will have a serious impact on them. These third-party applications include Feeddemon, NetNewsWire, Reeder, pump, etc.
In February, Brent Simmons, the author of the RSS app NetNewsWire and a former employee of RSS company Newsgator, described in detail the coming "RSS Apocalypse" in a blog post. For these application developers, the challenge now is how to migrate to a system whose infrastructure can replicate Google reader.