View Full Version : Google Shutting Down Google Reader



zookeeper
03-13-2013, 09:14 PM
Why does Google create cool services, make them popular and then turn around and shut them down? Most thought Google Reader was safe but it's closing down on July 1 of this year.

Google Reader shutting down in July (http://www.usatoday.com/story/tech/personal/2013/03/13/google-reader-shutdown/1986337/)

How can I download my Reader data? - Reader Help (http://support.google.com/reader/answer/3028851)

I would have been willing to pay for this Google service. Why they haven't they put premium packages together of some of these things instead of shutting them down? Last year it was iGoogle, I used to use Google Notebook and so many more. Here's a list of Google's discontinued products and services List of Google products - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_Google_products#Discontinued_products_and_ services)

Just the facts
03-13-2013, 09:41 PM
Why does Google create cool services, make them popular and then turn around and shut them down?

Probably too many employees working from home.

BBatesokc
03-14-2013, 05:41 AM
Never used Google Reader, but I really like their Snapseed Mac desktop app. Too bad its going too.

SoonerDave
03-14-2013, 06:49 AM
Why does Google create cool services, make them popular and then turn around and shut them down? Most thought Google Reader was safe but it's closing down on July 1 of this year.

Google Reader shutting down in July (http://www.usatoday.com/story/tech/personal/2013/03/13/google-reader-shutdown/1986337/)

How can I download my Reader data? - Reader Help (http://support.google.com/reader/answer/3028851)

I would have been willing to pay for this Google service. Why they haven't they put premium packages together of some of these things instead of shutting them down? Last year it was iGoogle, I used to use Google Notebook and so many more. Here's a list of Google's discontinued products and services List of Google products - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_Google_products#Discontinued_products_and_ services)

I have no insight on this beyond speculation, but I have a feeling deep, dark in the bowels of Google is a very strict business plan that says, in effect, create as many cool new things as we possibly can, give cool new thing exactly x amount of time, money, and people to become exactly this profitable, and if it isn't, it's killed off. Period.

Those here old enough to remember will recall that was how the old American Telephone and Telegraph (nee the "real" AT&T, not the current evil company that bears their name) operated -- the old Bell Labs was chartered to create, imagine, and think of every cool technology they could, hired lots of bright, forward thinking engineers to make the ideas real, then get patents on them, then leverage those patents as intellectual capital going forward. Not saying its an identical business plan in detail, but from the broader view, it sure seems a similar modus operandi.

I never used Google Reader, so I am not affected by this decision..and am frankly a lot more cranky over Twitter's decision to kill off TweetDeck and herd us like cats in to their awful web site/app. There was a REASON I didn't like Twitter until I got TweetDeck...grumble...but that's a grump for another thread.

BBatesokc
03-14-2013, 06:54 AM
I have no insight on this beyond speculation, but I have a feeling deep, dark in the bowels of Google is a very strict business plan that says, in effect, create as many cool new things as we possibly can, give cool new thing exactly x amount of time, money, and people to become exactly this profitable, and if it isn't, it's killed off. Period.

Those here old enough to remember will recall that was how the old American Telephone and Telegraph (nee the "real" AT&T, not the current evil company that bears their name) operated -- the old Bell Labs was chartered to create, imagine, and think of every cool technology they could, hired lots of bright, forward thinking engineers to make the ideas real, then get patents on them, then leverage those patents as intellectual capital going forward. Not saying its an identical business plan in detail, but from the broader view, it sure seems a similar modus operandi.

I never used Google Reader, so I am not affected by this decision..and am frankly a lot more cranky over Twitter's decision to kill off TweetDeck and herd us like cats in to their awful web site/app. There was a REASON I didn't like Twitter until I got TweetDeck...grumble...but that's a grump for another thread.

Check out Tweetbot. I like it... not as intuitive as it could be, but better than the native app.

Snowman
03-14-2013, 08:20 AM
Those here old enough to remember will recall that was how the old American Telephone and Telegraph (nee the "real" AT&T, not the current evil company that bears their name) operated -- the old Bell Labs was chartered to create, imagine, and think of every cool technology they could, hired lots of bright, forward thinking engineers to make the ideas real, then get patents on them, then leverage those patents as intellectual capital going forward. Not saying its an identical business plan in detail, but from the broader view, it sure seems a similar modus operandi..

Ironically they had about as bad a success rate of turning some nice innovative things into money making products. Even in tech where they wrote UNIX operating system (most operating systems to today are either directly based of it or partially have some parts from an offshoot called BSD) and the C programming language (has some of the most programs written for it and it's descendants make up the majority of all code ever written), both were done almost a decade before Microsoft was a company.

SoonerDave
03-14-2013, 08:31 AM
Ironically they had about as bad a success rate of turning some nice innovative things into money making products. Even in tech where they wrote UNIX and the C programing language almost a decade before Microsoft was a company.

But Bell Labs itself wasn't about turning products into something profitable. It was about creating intellectual capital and ramping up as many patents as you possibly could for the future going forward. Over the years, Bell Labs created hundreds if not thousands of patents on products I don't think were ever intended to see the light of day at a retail level - heck, back in the day, Bell Labs didn't even have to consider a retail element with the old Ma Bell monopoly.

Bell Labs did help develop the electronic successor to what was then known as "crossbar switching," which amounted to huge, byzantine electromechanical switches used to route calls throughout the public phone network.

Both of my folks worked at the old Western Electric plant on Reno, and they'd have an annual open house for employee families. As a kid, I distinctly remember all kinds of fascinating, ingenious products in some test rooms from what would be three or four decades old that never saw the light of day, but there are elements of those gadgets everywhere. One I remember was a touch-tone telephone with a built-in punch-card reader slot. You "recorded" your favorite numbers onto a card that was perhaps one-half the size of a playing card, put the card in the slot, pressed a button, and it "dialed" the number for you. Mind you, this was early/mid 1970's, so that was pretty phenomenal technology for the time.

Think Kodak was a company that operated in a similar way - in fact, during their recent bankruptcy, they were trying to satisfy at least some of their creditors by trying to sell some of their huge patent portfolio...unfortunately, most of Kodak's photographic work was predicated on the persistence of conventional film media, and we all know how that went.

Zuplar
03-14-2013, 11:02 AM
It is my second favorite Google product after Gmail. I'm heartbroken.

Me too. Google has been very disappointing lately. Maybe I've come to expect too much from them.

metro
03-14-2013, 11:51 AM
That's what's missing in today's business climate, the freedom to innovate and value it as part of business. Bell Labs, Disney Imagineering in the old days and now Google Labs and American Dream Labs are the only true idea labs really out there I can think of.

SoonerDave
03-14-2013, 12:04 PM
That's what's missing in today's business climate, the freedom to innovate and value it as part of business. Bell Labs, Disney Imagineering in the old days and now Google Labs and American Dream Labs are the only true idea labs really out there I can think of.

Great example. I remember routinely seeing specials about great and different things "Imagineers" were coming up with, but since the bean counters took over Disney they've really started homogenizing things, and the ingenuity side has really seemed to take a back seat. Looks like there's a lot of "meh" in reaction to the opening of the new Fantasyland in WDW Magic Kingdom a month or two ago, eg very derivative, nothing original or "Disneyesque." Disney just shuffled the head of Disney Parks out the door, so hopefully some new blood will help that.

metro
03-14-2013, 01:48 PM
Beck is recreating the Imagineering Labs with his American Dream Labs. It was inspired by Disney pre-corporate sellout Disney. Some of the original Disney family had input on why he started the labs, etc. I'm anxious to see what comes out of ADL.

zookeeper
03-14-2013, 02:00 PM
That's what's missing in today's business climate, the freedom to innovate and value it as part of business. Bell Labs, Disney Imagineering in the old days and now Google Labs and American Dream Labs are the only true idea labs really out there I can think of.

I agree with you Metro. Just to clarify the Google innovation project is actually called Google X Labs, Google Labs was another neat project that included experimental add-ons and they shut that down too a year or so ago.

Dubya61
03-20-2013, 01:50 PM
Why I Want a Google Chrome Phone - Datamation (http://www.datamation.com/mobile-wireless/why-i-want-a-google-chrome-phone.html)


Google views computing as being divided into three worlds:
1. The Smart Internet
The Smart Internet is the Google world -- a world in which algorithms and artificial intelligence enhance and augment human life while people are connected online.
Search is the original example of online intelligence for Google. Instead of finding things in Yahoo's directory -- basically the library model of giving you everything in a card catalog -- Google came out with a search engine that used algorithms to rank search results in a way that helps you find what you're looking for.
The ultimate expression of the Smart Internet is Google Now, the intelligent personal assistant that learns your preferences and gives you answers to questions even before you ask them.
2. The Dumb Internet
The Dumb Internet is one alternative to the Smart Internet. The Dumb Internet is the part of the online world where algorithms and artificial intelligence play no roll. The Internet is just a series of tubes delivering messages or information to users.
Google Reader is an example of the dumb Internet, and Google killed it because it's an alternative to Google's vision of the Smart Internet. As a Dumb Internet application, Google Reader is not only something that falls outside Google's area of interest and specialization, it's an alternative to Google's vision of intelligent, computer-assisted content discovery and consumption.
3. The Non-Internet
The other alternative to the Smart Internet is the offline world. The regular version of, say, Microsoft Office is an example of the offline world -- an app that runs on your desktop whether you're connected or not.
Understanding Google's three-part vision of the world helps you understand why Google does what it does -- and also what it will do in the future.