Reglikedomain industry desk

Google to kill Google Reader — What the…?

Popular RSS reader will be shut down.

I had to check my calendar to make sure it wasn’t April Fools’ day following hearing this news: Google is shutting down Google Reader.

I’ve been using the popular RSS reader for many years to read domain blogs and other news sources, and transitioning to another RSS reader will be painful. The only Google services I use more than Reader are search and Gmail.

Worse, as a blogger, it could mean a number of lost subscribers. As of right now my feed has over 6,500 subscribers on Google Reader.

I assume (hope) that most of those people will subscribe with another RSS reader.

Google Reader is one of the few sizable RSS readers that provides subscription statistics, so it’s also a downer to lose this benchmark.

I realize Reader might not be a money maker for Google, but when a firm abandons products like this it makes me less likely to invest time and energy in adopting its future products.

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