[gkoberger]

At the risk of insulting a project someone has worked hard at, I'm a bit worried about this trend.

There's been no fewer than 2-3 "Show HN: I made a Google Reader replacement!" posts a week over the past two months.

They all miss an important point, though: the problem was never a lack of RSS readers (there were already a ton). The problem is a lack of a canonical, fully featured RSS reader that's supported by a large company with lots of money and resources. If Google can't properly afford to operate an RSS feeder, why would someone be able to as a side project?

Plus, having a canonical RSS reader is good for the technology. ThePirateBay does it for torrents, GitHub for git, Reader for RSS, etc -- a central place that pushes the technology forward and provides a model for everyone else, rather than a fractured user base spaced out over dozens of sites made as side projects.

Anyway, sorry @meister -- this comment has nothing to do with Pikareader and all your hard work, and more to do with RSS in general.

[barrkel]

We already had a fully featured RSS reader supported by a large company not lacking in money or resources. It got closed down because the company had lots of money and resources: it wasn't a strategic product, and any contribution it could have made to revenue would have been immaterial.

In the medium term, I think canning Reader has hurt Google amongst the technically literate. It certainly has pushed Google from the 'creepy but mostly good' to just 'creepy' for me. It's a notch above Facebook now, and no longer worthy of a logged in session - relegated to a secondary browser, I can feel free to block all Google-related third party requests.

As for a Reader replacement, I'm currently going with Ino Reader. Free and unlimited (thus far). I don't know if or how it will make money, but it's been the best replacement I've tried yet.

And "there were already a ton" of readers? No. Almost all readers had to differentiate themselves from Reader, because it was so good. There's a massive gap in the market, such as it is, right now. It should and will be filled by a small company, probably a lifestyle business.

[meister]

I understand your point of view, we saw an avalanche of competitors since Google Reader death announcement. Some projects will emerge as the new leader of this market.

I have launched other projects such as Pikacode.com (Git/mercurial hosting) which is "yet another GitHub" but running since 2008 for thousands of users. So my work can be seen as a side project but with true conviction and dedication for quality and support over time.

Work can be achieved to push the limits of RSS technology. Building offline contents from feeds, mobile readers, media aggregations (for example magazine build from RSS articles)...