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Tech Thursday, March 14th 2013 at 8:32 am

Goodnight, Sweet Prince: Google Reader Gone as of July 1st

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If Google Reader is a big part of your morning routine, you might want to brace yourself for change. Google announced yesterday that it is pulling the plug on its RSS aggregator as of July 1st. That means you’ve got just a couple of months to find a new service to hold all your daily news in one place. Thankfully, Google is making it pretty easy to export your existing feeds to a new aggregator, so instead of cursing the darkness, this might be your cue to light a candle and find a new service that’s better suited to your headline hunting habits.

While it won’t affect folks who have moved on to other readers (just saying, y’all, Feedly is pretty great) Google Reader still has a loyal core following, despite seeing usage slip over the past few years as audiences turn more and more to Facebook and Twitter as de facto news feeds. That core following, though, isn’t taking the news lying down. As of this post, there are no less than four petitions on Change.org asking Google not to kill the service this summer, with the top one already boasting more than 35,000 signatures.

The prospects for that are a bit bleak, though. This isn’t the first time the Reader has been on the chopping block, and with Google heavily invested in driving more users to Google+ when they want to share or read news, having a service around that isn’t that seems counterintuitive. So by all means, if you love the service, like we here at Geekosystem do, let Google know how you feel. It probably won’t hurt to have a plan B in the coming months, though.

No doubt plenty of you left Google Reader in the dust long ago, though. The service was reliable and predictable, but, even fans have to admit, lacking in bells and whistles. If you’re still using an aggregator, what are you using? If you’re not, what’s curating your news for you now?

(via The Verge)

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  • http://www.nerdsassemble.co.uk/ milliways

    I’m just glad that Feedly we’re preparing for this happening, considering that the service mainly works through having an existing Google Reader account.

  • http://superronnie.com/ Super Ronnie

    I LIKE that it is lacking in bells and whistleeeeees. This feels like a break up. :(

  • Brent Stewart

    Agreed. It was it’s simplicity that I fell in love with. Not only do I do 90% of all my RSS consumption via desktop, I personally LOATH apps like Currents and Flipbook when on mobile. I don’t want my RSS feeds to look like a digital magazine. I want a clean linear interface like Reader had. A sad day indeed. It’s like my mother calling to tell me the family pet died.

  • Kyle

    Just closed my Google account. Seems like they are doing this to all their services. I won’t be around anymore.

  • http://blog.coatesism.com/ Shaun M Coates

    Between social media and email subscriptions I have found myself using Google Reader a lot less lately. In fact, I just went through my feeds and there was only one remaining that I needed to connect with outside of Reader.