My favorite comment from the post:<p>"And by the way – how is this app strategic for you guys and Reader is not? A little clarity would certainly be appreciated."<p>I too would love to know what Google is thinking here.
Google Reader had an easy and clear migration path to export your data. I can't understand why people keep bashing Google for it. Just take your data to somewhere else. If tomorrow Keep goes away they'll do the same.
This has probably been said 100 times already on 100 other HN threads, but so what? Quit the whining. I have been using Reader for years, and I'm mildly disappointing that they're closing it. I know perfectly well that there will be a dozen solid replacements that probably have more features before Reader actually dies. That's the way the tech world works - services close all the time for any number of reasons. None of them is all that special, though - if the service genuinely added value for lots of people, then there will be replacements, and if there isn't one, then make one yourself and bask in the profitability.<p>If you're that upset about it, then what do you really want from the tech world? A world where no service is ever killed or changed in a way that makes it less useful to you? We wouldn't have all of the awesome stuff that we have now if thousands of companies weren't willing to kill or change stuff that was unprofitable and take a chance on something new. At least Google is being pretty nice about it - we have months of notice and easy ways to get our feed lists out of Reader. They could have just up and pulled the plug without telling anyone or giving anyone a chance to get data out. Lots of services have been killed in just that way before.<p>Personally, I'm waiting a few weeks for all of the other services to settle down and get used to the massive traffic influx. After that, I expect I'll find something better than Reader and get used to that. And then that will be killed someday too, and I'll have to find yet another thing. Life goes on.
Merits of whether <i>Keep</i> is comparable to <i>Reader</i> aside - I wonder how long we're going to be seeing the "...but Google Reader" refrain from pundits.<p>The camps of opinion I've seen on how Google should behave:<p>1) Pundits: Support an increasingly burdensome array of fringe services which cost them more than they gain (in their opinion)<p>2) HN: Reduce their experimental forays and leave (for now) private/small companies to their niches.<p>3) Coders: open source the services when shuttering.<p>1 and 2 would seem anathema to Google - the next Facebook could be hiding in either the organizational lethargy created by the former or the failure to act on the latter.<p>3 is going to be prohibitively expensive or difficult depending on how the service was built.<p>I'm just not sure there's anything other than a lot of sound and fury in the future of these discussions, which makes them boring.
I fully agree with Om here. In fact, I have found myself avoiding Google services as much as possible now. GMail is the only one I am using regularly and which does not have good alternatives.<p>I also agree that Google is becoming like Microsoft, trying everything.<p>I'm going to stay with companies like Evernote.
I don't see how dropping one product == become untrustworthy.<p>This is like if you went to the supermarket every day to buy milk, flour, sugar, beans, and lettuce. And then the supermarket realises that it is uneconomical for them to provide lettuce, so they drop it, but they do start selling eggs. And you look at those eggs and say 'Yeah, Right. I'm not going to buy those. I remember what happened to the lettuce.'
> The service that drives more traffic than Google+ was sacrificed because it didn’t meet some vague corporate goals; users — many of them life long — be damned.<p>I think this explains why Reader was killed... It competes with G+. Want updates from your favorite website? Follow them on G+.<p>It's a turn away from open formats and interoperability.
My impression of google from age ~15 was of a company who had balanced profitability with genuine altruistic intent. They had so many products, tools, services, libraries... everything and pretty much all of it was free and freely available.<p>It hasn't really changed that much, but jesus, my perception has. Charging for Google Maps was a warning sign, though it only really applied to companies, fair game. Wave was flippant, it came and went too fast to understand the gesture. Google Notes always needed some love and attention it was never going to get.<p>But Google Reader? It was/is uniquely useful. Widely supported, widely loved, widely used (as far as I can tell). It was the kind of thing that made me feel Google had your best interests at heart, I can't imagine it made them much money.<p>Just to clarify, I'm not upset about Google Reader, far from it <a href="http://theoldreader.com/" rel="nofollow">http://theoldreader.com/</a> looks entirely capable of picking up the slack. It's just upsetting to see a company that I really thought was different is just a company with margins and directives and the rest. I guess I'm an idiot.
Does anybody remember Google Notebook? It did almost exactly what Keep does.<p>I used notes extensively, and one day... You know the drill.<p>Good luck to those who will jump on Keep. After notebook, I switched to MacJournal, it works great for me, and I am not thinking of switching to an online alternative. There are other tools that are better suited for keeping stuff, such as DevonThink (check Macupdate Promo).
So this is the ugly side of "ship fast, ship often".<p>At some point, when you have a ton of resources and people are shipping products out the wazoo.....you have to kill products. When you kill products, you lose confidence for future product announcements and skew your engagement numbers.<p>What is a company like Google to do, when their larger products command most of their resources?
the tech community is curious sometimes. When a startup pivots, for a chance for something better its celebrated. When Kevin Rose shuts down oink cause it doesn't meet his initial expectations its applauded. Yet everyone wants to speculate how important Reader was to a vocal few (only google knows active user number) and they are the bad guy for possibly shutting down a niche service for a few to focus on bigger ambitions. Export and maybe one of the newer products are better, yet no one wants to event try that and would rather attack a reasonable business decision.
This is the fundamental problem for <i>any</i> cloud services. You don't know if a small company like Evernote is going to go bust, too, and many have, sometimes bought to kill by Google and its ilk. So it's no safer than using large company products. And if not Evernote, some other service you once used, like say delicious. Or they don't update it as fast, and it gets clunky, like flickr (not coincidentally both bought and ruined by yahoo)<p>For real security of data and use: either<p>1. Download and install with local storage only<p>2. whatever service you do use, save all the things locally frequently, in multiple open data formats.
Without going into the whole debate of 'why should I use it when they're just going to Reader it?', does anyone else think this is a massive PR strategy failure? Seriously, the worst time to announce a product must be just after you've decided to shut one down that has a, granted not overwhelmingly large, vocal user base currently flogging the company on all platforms.<p>Super bad timing, the product is tainted with negativity already, if they'd given it even a fortnight to die off it'd be a much better play.
Anyone in the "Just let me pay for Reader" brigade (I'm not sure whether or not Om is a member, though it seems likely given the "How much would you pay" poll I saw on one of his posts) has no basis for complaining about Keep.<p>Keep, unlike Reader, is a paid service. A big point of Keep is to encourage people to use Drive - a storage service you pay for, once you fill up your introductory tier (keeping audio notes might help with that).
Personally, I have grown weary of the Google intelligence umbrella. I recently closed my Google account, as my CR-48 finally died, and moved my email to another company. I use Evernote for my notekeeping and Flickr for photos. I use Google only for search these days.<p>Now, would it be nice to have all of that under one company? Sure, but there are too many privacy issues when doing so under Google.
You are also welcome to stop using Google Search, Gmail (and contacts), Google Drive/Documents, Google+, Google Calendar, and YouTube, ...<p>Because, you know, they are from the same company responsbile for the demise of Google Reader, and the less you get DEPENDENT on them, the least you will suffer from the demise of another product as this.<p>Or you can move on.
I pride myself on being very calm and patient, even while my 9 month old is screaming in my ear and smashing the keyboard while I try to type this.<p>I don't normally comment much, and when I do I try not to be negative. One thing I discovered in the last few days is that I have absolutely no patience for whining, especially when coming from grown man. This post, and a lot of comments around here sound like whining to me. These are my feelings regarding the recent Google Reader news and the comments surrounding it..<p>I want to be clear, I know why people are pissed off, some are angry because their beloved product was taken away, and for some, their trust was broken, perhaps more than once. It has certainly struck a nerve, and I want to have these conversations, but something about the tone of the people has really turned me off.<p></end of whine>
Why stop with Google Reader and Keep ? The article seems to suggest that just because Google pulled the plug on Reader that it will pull the plug on <i>any</i> product it releases. Yes pulling down Reader was a bad idea but this is an overreaction.
Question I would ask: How would you feel if Google acquired Feedly tomorrow?<p>Reason I ask: Google scrapped Notebook (<a href="http://www.google.com/googlenotebook/faq.html" rel="nofollow">http://www.google.com/googlenotebook/faq.html</a>) a while back, and has now released Google Keep. To me, this is a tear down and rebranding. I can't speak to the reason of it, but I would guess Google Keep already has more users than Notebook did. I can't speak for Google, but I certainly know their goal is not to lose 500k users to Feedly. My guess being, they likely want to take the smoothest, but also cheapest, way out of a product that they can no longer maintain.
My two cents: trust only apps that allows to export 100% of your data, or even better saves your data in an open format accessible through API.<p>At the end of the day it is not about Google or Microsoft or Evernote, but about not losing data You created.
Is it just me or did Google become a lot more focused on monetization and a lot less on protecting the open web and making great products as soon as Marissa Mayer left?
Hey you know what would be super xtra cool? If this Keep thing let you keep clipping links, like, automatically, from the same site, whenever new stuff is published, into your Google Drive(TM), which is super cool b/c it syncs down to your computer so you can read those clips offline... OH NEVERMIND.
People that want reader are not using +. It's awesome! And any way I can increase ROI on my Adwords I support. If google can suggest my brand more often to the proper peeps based off data collected that means greater sales for me. Know the user!
If at this point Google reinstates Reader, I can tell you they will win many hearts and goodwill. I don't remember a product being brought back from grave and if they were to do it, they will be viewed as a genuinely considerate company (IMO).
It is absurd to expect a business to not to shift its priorities.<p>Google did more harm to RSS technology by letting it deteriorate over years. Now that it's gone, I am very hopeful that RSS will evolve and deliver content in better and new ways.
For those who are upset by Reader shutdown and want more, check out Schemer <a href="https://www.schemer.com" rel="nofollow">https://www.schemer.com</a>, a site that is more strategic than Reader to Google.
Expecting services to continue forever is like expecting that you will never be laid off.<p>It is a rude awakening when it happens, but it should hardly be surprising for anyone that has been around for a while.
RSS reader on the side I dont get the idea of Google Keep. It does not seem the notes are saved to Google Drive. Can I access them offline? Are they sync'd with my phone?
Keep is great - this is music to my ears... since buying a Nexus 4 I couldn't believe there wasn't a built-in app for notes, and I don't feel like paying for such a simple tool (sorry evernote) so I was using Gtasks... now that this is out, I'm happy (for now) still... damn u google for the inability to use BT and WIFI at the SAME TIME on a Nexus!!!!
Before Google+ came along, Google had many great products and embraced the OpenWeb. Now Google has abandoned Open Standards like RSS and CalDAV, and I think Google is more interested in building their own walled garden.
This is ridiculous. How hard is it to import an OPML file into any of the other feed services that already exist on the web, or those popping up everyday. Do we really need to keep regurgitating this story?! it's been dominating the front page for a week now.<p>Here are the differences between Reader and Keep: Reader was an abandoned and an unclaimed product, kept on life support.
Keep is a feature of Drive, a product which actually is acknowledged to be under someone's management<p>I hope Evernote will exist as it is now forever and that the author won't have eat his words someday.