# Google Reader



## AndrewOfCymru (Mar 20, 2013)

With the upcoming demise of Google Reader, I was wondering if there are any Reader users here and if they have found any suitable alternatives yet.


----------



## Scottish Lass (Mar 20, 2013)

I put the same query out to my FB friends. Apparently I'm the only nerd using an RSS feed, much less for roughly 90 feeds (exceeding the cap on the free versions of some alternatives). I did see reviews for Feedly, The Old Reader, NewsBlur, and a few others. None of them have all of Reader's capabilities, and some have freemium versions (NewsBlur, for sure). 

So far, I haven't made a choice yet, and I'm not looking forward to it (or my Hotmail converting itself to Outlook).


----------



## Romans922 (Mar 20, 2013)

I am a Google Reader user. I'm hoping someone comes up with something.


----------



## Jake (Mar 20, 2013)

I have yet to find an alternative. I think a good solution would be for Google to opensource the website... since it already works well, the source code could be published and maintained by others. There's a petition for that here: https://www.change.org/petitions/google-make-google-reader-open-source-3

I don't know if that is fruitless though.


----------



## AndrewOfCymru (Mar 20, 2013)

I found out that I am the only nerd in my circle of friends too. Most of them didn't know what I was talking about.  I've tried all the ones you have mentioned and a few more, but, as you say, none of them have the same capabilities or UI. I'm trying Taptu at the moment, but it doesn't seem to bring all of the feeds over as quickly as Reader and some not at all.


----------



## matt01 (Mar 20, 2013)

Romans922 said:


> ...I'm hoping someone comes up with something.




I am as well; however, it doesn't look likely, so I suppose I will cut most of what I read...which is probably a good thing. I don't like any of the other options that I have looked at.


----------



## gkterry (Mar 20, 2013)

i have found Feedly to work pretty well. They are supporting the Google feeds now and will have their own service in place before Greader dies.

get it at feedly.com


----------



## Zach (Mar 20, 2013)

I'm also really bummed about this. I'm going to check out feedly at some point. When is it officially being taken down again?


----------



## gkterry (Mar 20, 2013)

I think Greader ends on July 1


----------



## Jake (Mar 20, 2013)

Zach said:


> When is it officially being taken down again?



July 1.


----------



## au5t1n (Mar 20, 2013)

I use Reader too. I check it infrequently enough that I'll probably just bookmark the few blogs I want to check here and there.


----------



## littlepeople (Mar 20, 2013)

Yahoo pipes could be set up to replace the function of reader, but it's not at all user friendly to do so.


----------



## xirtam (Mar 20, 2013)

Freedly changes everything over with one click (whether good or bad I don't know). I looked at it last week. There are options that allow you to change the view. But alas, it is not Google Reader. Very sad day when I got the July 1st message. Before I found GR I used to click on all of the websites/blogs  Google Reader.


----------



## PaulCLawton (Mar 20, 2013)

I was planning on waiting until the 11th hour, who knows what might be developed between now and July 1.


----------



## Scottish Lass (Mar 20, 2013)

The Old Reader is the most like GR, but they're vague about what the setup will be come July (as far as a paywall, etc.).


----------



## Zach (Mar 20, 2013)

If it's until July 1 (I thought I remembered summer) I don't plan on moving away from GR anytime soon. I don't understand why Google made the call to shut down GR though.


----------



## Scottish Lass (Mar 20, 2013)

They claimed declining use, focus on other products, etc.


----------



## gkterry (Mar 20, 2013)

It isn't just the reader that is disappearing but any rss program that relies on the Google Reader API will be in trouble. So, come July 1st any RSS reader cannot in any way rely on Google or its API. At this point, Feedly is the only one I am aware of that has stated they will have their service totally independent of Google. Granted Feedly is not exactly like Greader but it can be configured to be pretty close on a desktop computer. I would suggest watching some of the Feedly instructional videos. Their mobile apps are a little less configurable due to the available screen real estate. Feedly had something like 500,000 new subscribers in the 2 or 3 days after Google made their announcement.

All in all I am satisfied with Feedly but who knows something better may come around but if not I am comfortable with Feedly.


----------



## JP Wallace (Mar 21, 2013)

I'm trialling NVibe at the minute - it seems fine. You need to sign up to a free account.

Netvibes

I actually didn't use Google Reader much, but rather the Google Reader Feed into my iGoogle page - that I will miss a lot - I probably won't even use my iGoogle page now.


----------



## Berean (Mar 21, 2013)

Scottish Lass said:


> They claimed declining use, focus on other products, etc.



Similar to when they announced the demise of iGoogle which is supposed to fade away this coming November I believe. I'll miss it.


----------



## Zach (Mar 21, 2013)

I made the switch to feedly. It's not the same, but it will do for what I am using it.


----------



## xirtam (Mar 21, 2013)

I have feedly too but I still use google reader. I will check it out every now and then to get used to it until July 1st. On a side note, FEEDLY is "nicer" than Google Reader, if that amounts to much?


----------



## Zach (Mar 21, 2013)

xirtam said:


> I have feedly to but I still use google reader. I will check it out every now and then to get use to it until July 1st. On a side note, FEEDLY is "nicer" than Google Reader, if that amounts to much?



Feedly is "flashier" than Google Reader. That's one of the things I don't like about feedly. Google Reader was nice and plain.


----------



## Claudiu (Mar 21, 2013)

It's frustrating how Google will close fairly large projects down almost out of the blue


----------



## xirtam (Mar 22, 2013)

Zach said:


> Feedly is "flashier" than Google Reader. That's one of the things I don't like about feedly. Google Reader was nice and plain.



Flashier might be a better word. I'm sure we'll survive this transition.


----------



## Manuel (Mar 22, 2013)

AndrewOfCymru said:


> With the upcoming demise of Google Reader, I was wondering if there are any Reader users here and if they have found any suitable alternatives yet.


Opera... Thunderbird... Firefox live bookmarks... Simple RSS reader for Firefox...


----------



## re4med (Apr 11, 2013)

Romans922 said:


> I am a Google Reader user. I'm hoping someone comes up with something.



I also use (used!?) Google Reader and when they made the announcement I decided to move to my own server based installation of an RSS reader so I would never be caught like this again. I looked at many options and landed on Tiny Tiny RSS, which is database driven. I can offer FREE use to anyone who would like to try it. You can export your current Google Reader to Tiny Tiny RSS (which retains the original tagging). I have customized it to look like Google Reader with far more options (ability to share to Facebook, Evernote, Pocket, Readability, Kindle, Email). I am happy to allow users of the PB free access but you need to contact me first. It works very well (better than Google Reader, I think).


----------



## re4med (Apr 11, 2013)

I should have also mentioned that there is an app for the installation as well allowing you to read your feeds anywhere. The app is very nice.


----------



## Pilgrim (Apr 11, 2013)

Scottish Lass said:


> So far, I haven't made a choice yet, and I'm not looking forward to it (or my Hotmail converting itself to Outlook).



I only use Hotmail/Outlook as a "junk" account so others may use features that I don't and others may have a different opinion. But it appears to me that the main change is cosmetic. Most (if not all) of the "new" features that have been touted in reviews are things that were added when they upgraded Hotmail a few years ago with the Windows Live roll out. I will say that the Outlook Android app is awful. 

With regard to Google Reader, I don't know what I'll do, if anything. In recent years I've tended to keep up with blogs via FB and Twitter. If it's a Wordpress blog, I follow it with the WP reader. I have a bunch of blogs bookmarked in G Reader, some of which I've probably forgotten about. I probably haven't used it regularly in 3-4 years.


----------



## Semper Fidelis (Apr 11, 2013)

Pilgrim said:


> With regard to Google Reader, I don't know what I'll do, if anything. In recent years I've tended to keep up with blogs via FB and Twitter.



I agree on the comment about Twitter. Not only is it a good way to aggregate things you want to follow but the free Twitter app for iPad is very nice.


----------



## Scottish Lass (Apr 11, 2013)

Pilgrim said:


> I only use Hotmail/Outlook as a "junk" account so others may use features that I don't and others may have a different opinion. But it appears to me that the main change is cosmetic. Most (if not all) of the "new" features that have been touted in reviews are things that were added when they upgraded Hotmail a few years ago with the Windows Live roll out.


Yes, it was mostly cosmetic, but Outlook has a pretty bad history of being targeted for viruses and such. I'd rather not dump my address completely since I've used it longer than any other.


----------



## Pilgrim (Apr 11, 2013)

Scottish Lass said:


> Pilgrim said:
> 
> 
> > I only use Hotmail/Outlook as a "junk" account so others may use features that I don't and others may have a different opinion. But it appears to me that the main change is cosmetic. Most (if not all) of the "new" features that have been touted in reviews are things that were added when they upgraded Hotmail a few years ago with the Windows Live roll out.
> ...



Which address? Hotmail accounts are switched to the Outlook (web) interface but the hotmail.com address stays the same. If somebody wants an outlook.com email address one has to sign up for it the same way as it was done with live.com addresses. Outlook.com addresses only became available in the past few months, to my understanding, so there is not much history to be had with regard to spam. I did create at least one outlook.com address but I haven't checked it lately. When Hotmail was upgraded a few years ago, I created a bunch of Hotmail and Live accounts so that I could have specific account names that weren't available in Gmail, most of which I've never ended up using. If many other people were like me, the Microsoft email user stats are skewed even worse than some have imagined. 

It looks to me like out of the big 3 Yahoo is the biggest spam target and also the biggest target for hackers. Almost all hacked spam emails I get from contacts are from Yahoo addresses. By contrast I've rarely gotten spam in my Gmail accounts, especially obscene type spam. At most I get a handful a week of that nature, and that's on an account I've had since 2005. Most of the spam is business related that I haven't bothered to unsubscribe from.


----------



## Scottish Lass (Apr 11, 2013)

Yes, my address will stay the same. I'd switch to gmail if it weren't my oldest address (and therefore on record dozens of places as a contact method).


----------



## matt01 (Apr 15, 2013)

Pilgrim said:


> With regard to Google Reader, I don't know what I'll do, if anything. In recent years I've tended to keep up with blogs via FB and Twitter. If it's a Wordpress blog, I follow it with the WP reader. I have a bunch of blogs bookmarked in G Reader, some of which I've probably forgotten about. I probably haven't used it regularly in 3-4 years.



I was considering different options, and then I checked out my stats page in Reader and found that I had read 13,694 items since 4 March 10... quick fix to that; deleted all of the subscriptions, and now I won't worry about the changing of Reader.


----------



## jogri17 (Apr 15, 2013)

Jake said:


> I have yet to find an alternative. I think a good solution would be for Google to opensource the website... since it already works well, the source code could be published and maintained by others. There's a petition for that here: https://www.change.org/petitions/goo...-open-source-3
> 
> I don't know if that is fruitless though.



According to several tech journalists, this possibility was considered (Google clearly has no problem with open source), the problem is that Reader was apparently integrated with other stuff that could give away some of their other things they guard secretly (i.e. search). Just throwing the code out there would give show too much stuff on how Google works from an inside perspective, and to comb through the code getting rid of those aspects would be too time consuming and not worth it. Realistically blogs are a bit passé and people use twitter as RSS. What may be possible is something like RSS to be integrated into Google +.


----------

