Genuine question, in your opinion why did Google killing Reader effectively kill RSS? Why did people not move to alternative products? I was never a Google Reader user myself so I never needed to move.
Not OP, but Google Reader subverted Google’s model of hosting things and getting good analytics / selling ads. It also went against Google+‘S whole idea of following feeds.
In general, Google doesn’t want to encourage stuff that lives off their cloud. RSS is the best protocol for Facebook/G+ type stuff where you want feeds and updates, but it’s harder for central control.
Google has done this with other products over the past decades. I remember when Blogger used to generate flat html that would publish to self-hosted web sites. And Google desktop that would index your local machine. Lots of stuff that fit into “organize the world’s information” mission and empowered users was discarded or deemphasized in favor of things that put Google between users and their data.
In general, Google doesn’t want to encourage stuff that lives off their cloud. RSS is the best protocol for Facebook/G+ type stuff where you want feeds and updates, but it’s harder for central control.
Google has done this with other products over the past decades. I remember when Blogger used to generate flat html that would publish to self-hosted web sites. And Google desktop that would index your local machine. Lots of stuff that fit into “organize the world’s information” mission and empowered users was discarded or deemphasized in favor of things that put Google between users and their data.