[marginalia_nu]

> I'm still angry at Google for killing Reader. It was the best way to consume content on the web.

I never used Reader so I'm not genuinely curious, what about it makes it difficult for someone to just create a copy of the service?

[Kye]

It's not about features. It's about defaults. Google Reader was linked right there on the top bar of the world's largest search engine. No one could credibly claim RSS was dead or neglect/remove support for it in the next revision.

[marginalia_nu]

That doesn't really answer my question. You can put any link in the bookmarks bar of the browser and have it there in every window.

[Kye]

That won't make it the default for and visible to the entire world.

[marginalia_nu]

I don't understand why that matters? If 3 other people or a billion other people are using a RSS reading service, surely my own experience is the same.

[playingalong]

Not really. Demand on RSS might induce RSS supply. Or might have had.

[marginalia_nu]

RSS is still very much around though. Most websites that aren't silos offer them. In fact, big problem is that many websites offer too many RSS feeds, and websites that don't need them offer them; makes algorithmic curation much harder.

[Euphorbium]

Google reader had social features, shares and comments.

[marginalia_nu]

Ah, now that actually makes sense!

[Kye]

You run a search engine and don't understand why defaults matter? Google pays billions to be the default. I don't understand what you don't understand. RSS was the default. Then it "died" (became non-default) and we got the Facebook feed and Twitter's toxic impression-pumping algorithms, and it's so much worse.

Journalists depended on Reader the way they came to depend on Twitter. They didn't move to another reader.

[marginalia_nu]

RSS feeds are still very much around regardless of Google's actions. I'm looking at it from a user's perspective, not the operator's perspective, at what service is being offered? My question was why google reader was good, not why it was popular.

As for my search engine, I genuinely don't track my users, so I really don't have the fainest how many users I have. 4 people or a million people use my search engine, and I make the same amount of money from it. If I want the search engine to do well, I have to use my own eyes to assess how well it performs.

[zerojames]

Thank you for sharing this! I didn't have the opportunity to use Reader. I have always wondered what made it stand out.