Andy BaioJun 30, 2023
The Verge goes deep on who killed Google Reader, ten years after its demise. I’ve always been furious about this, and somehow, reading this made me even angrier. https://www.theverge.com/23778253/google-reader-death-2013-rss-social
Who killed Google Reader?

Google killed Reader in 2013, shutting down its RSS reader after years of neglect. Now, the team that built it reflects on what they made and how the web has changed in the decade since.

The Verge
Show threadAndy Baio
I knew a lot of this story already, except how horribly Google execs treated the Reader team, who built something wonderful and then were forced to constantly defend it and beg for resources, until they were dragged away to work on Google Plus and it was unceremoniously killed.
Jun 30, 2023 at 2:05pmWeb
Show threadMatt RoundJun 30, 2023
@andybaio I'd have been SO fired if I'd been in that meeting, would've instinctively laughed or raised my eyebrows at that line
Show threadTim (Swast) SweñaJun 30, 2023
@andybaio oof
Show threadDavid WheelerJun 30, 2023
@andybaio I kind of appreciate the clarity here. This condescension is usually implied.
Show threadDan SugalskiJun 30, 2023
@andybaio It's difficult to overstate how much of a mess Google Plus made inside Google.
Show threadM. ForesterJun 30, 2023
@andybaio I'll have to read the article.
To be honest, I never got the prolonged grieving for Google Reader, although I never used it myself. I've been using a bunch of different feed readers over the years (including Feedly at one time) and RSS never went away or died for me.
Can somebody tell me what exactly made this implementation so very special?
Show threadgioJun 30, 2023
@mforester @andybaio "...Reader launched in 2005, right as the blogging era went mainstream; it made a suddenly huge and sprawling web feel small and accessible and helped a generation of news obsessives and super-commenters feel like they weren’t missing anything. It wasn’t Google’s most popular app, not by a long shot, but it was one of its most beloved..."
Show threadlia bulaongJun 30, 2023
@andybaio frequently tempted to write a top ten dumbest things decided by tech execs that helped ruined the internet list
Show threadAndy BaioJun 30, 2023
@lia anything less than a Top 100 would be too competitive
Show threadlia bulaongJun 30, 2023
@andybaio i guess ten that affected me the most personally would be a good sorting mechanism? whatever happened to that yahoo exec who kept shooting down the ios flickr apps…
Show threadrstevens 🐳💨✅Jun 30, 2023
@andybaio everyone who has ever run google should go to jail or be thrown in a pit
Show threadJesseJun 30, 2023
@rstevens @andybaio When we abolish prisons we don’t have to let them know
Show threadrstevens 🐳💨✅Jun 30, 2023
@misc we can keep one prison for special cases like this
Show threadRob Cottingham (OLD ACCOUNT)Jul 2, 2023
@rstevens @misc Getting some real Kingdom Come vibes here.
Show threadmichael miller jrJun 30, 2023
@andybaio Gross.
Show threadBertJul 1, 2023
@andybaio grrrrrrr. I was so frustrated by the loss of Reader and available options at the time that I abandoned RSS and, like many, went to Twitter. Thankful that @brentsimmons brought back @NetNewsWire !
Show threadRob Cottingham (OLD ACCOUNT)Jul 2, 2023
@andybaio The death of Google Reader remains one of the big eye-opening moments for me about where the digital giants really stood — that for all the rhetoric about empowering people and building an open Internet, they really were just ruthless profit-maximizers like any other. Naive of me to believe any differently... but in retrospect I realize how badly I'd wanted them to be an exception to the rapaciousness of corporate capital.