The real message from the closure of Reader

The closure of Google Reader came out of the blue for many people, including me, but really, it absolutely should not have done. If anything, it was staring us in the face. Google has a habit of trying things out for short periods of time and then, like the 3 year old toddler, throwing them to one side if they don't do quite what they expect. I've written about Google killing off products before, and I'm sure that I will again. It's abundantly clear that Google isn't interested in the number of users that a product has, since Reader had millions of them.They're entirely up front about this: "We know Reader has a devoted following who will be very sad to see it go. We’re sad too." What's really hard to stomach here is the total hypocrisy of that statement - they're not sad - it's entirely within their own power to change or improve or keep the product.

Let's not forget however, it's not just Reader that they've closed in this round, but they have done away with some scripts, APIs, Google Building Maker, Cloud Connect and others as mentioned in their blog post. So, what's going to go next? Due to Google's weird behaviours where they'll buy stuff up and play with it for a while, there are plenty of options. Google TV (what do you mean, you've never heard of it?) is going to disappear - it's never made any inroads and no-one talks about it, and that means it doesn't make money. Want something bigger? How about Blogger? Google has always had a love hate relationship with the tool; it bought it up, did nothing with it for years until people starting leaving in droves, then did a bit of fixing. They've not done much with it since, and there are lots of alternatives out there. Groups is another possibility; now we're powering ahead with G+ communities, I can certainly see them dumping Groups, much though I hope they don't because it's a useful tool. Baraza? What, do you mean you haven't heard of that one either? (Hint; neither has anyone else, that's why it'll disappear).

That's not the real damage though. It's that total lack of trust that I have with Google nowadays. (Well, if truth be known, that I've had since about 2004.) There are rumours that Google is going to announce a new tool called Keep, which is going to be a cloud based note taking service to rival Evernote. Now, for those of you with long memories, Google had a really nice product called Google Notebook, but they killed that off as well. This might be a new cloud based version coming back, but do you REALLY want to walk directly into the hands of the kidnappers to hold yourself hostage to a product that Google might just decide to can in the next few years? Think about it...

So; the real message, which is not a new one and is one that I bang on about now and then is simple:

Google is not your friend. Do not trust Google. Google just wants to make money.

Comments

[Michael]

Phil,

that summary seems to completely contradict your previous post about not paying for products that are freely available (in that case RSS feed readers). Free RSS readers will be ten a penny now but encouraging Reader-migrants to hop on board one of them isn't necessarily good advice (Pinboard is one example).

Reader allows you to export your content anyway, so no real loss to the end user. At the end of the day if it doesn't pay the bills why should they support it? So I'm not sure how any Reader user (I've been using Reader since launch) has been held "hostage to a product that Google might just decide to can in the next few years". I've had a good run for my money and now its time to move on. Where's the problem?

[Phil Bradley]

Thanks for your comments Michael. I'm not sure that we can rely on either free OR paid products these days can we? They can all fail, and equally they can all succeed. Netvibes for example has now been going for years without charging its users for the product. Other products work well with limited free offerings, backed up by a paid version.

I'm slightly amused by the idea that Google has to 'pay the bills'. Yes, of course they do, you're quite right, but one of the ways that they do that, as an advertising company, is to get us to use their products, and to keep using their products. That means that we have to trust them, and sure, some products will not give them the revenue that they're after, but in the grand scheme of things, sometimes keeping users happy and satisfied is paramount. They're not going to do that if we can't trust the product they bring out today is still going to be around in a few months time.

I'm really pleased that you're able to put down one product and pick up another, but please don't assume that your skills and experiences are shared by everyone else, because I can assure you that they're not. For some people it's going to be a very big and difficult wrench to learn a new product; if they had chosen a Google product to use in the first place 'because it's Google' they need to realise that probably isn't a good enough reason any longer. They may be better off using a product that's produced by a smaller organisation that want to focus on a great product and keep their user base happy. That's not Google.

[Megan Roberts]

Hi Phil,

Some recently suggested to me something that I think sounds rather plausible for Google's behaviour: it's about finding possible competition, buying it up and then shutting it down once it's got market domination. That would seem to be what they did with Reader and what they'll continue to do to other small companies with great tools.

Even if they're not competing directly, Google seems to think that any of your online life you spend elsewhere is a bad thing and will seek to get rid of it where possible.

Like you said, it's about lack of trust. Google have now lost my trust. I have to keep my (now rather unpleasant to use) gmail account because of the length of time I've used it and the number of people that have the address/things that I've subscribed to; but other than that I've deleted all of my Google accounts after this. Yes, I'm that petty! But it's not just that - if I can't trust them to look after my interests when using their products, why should I reward their tactics by being another person they can 'sell' to advertisers?

Now I just have to re-train my brain to type something else in when I want to do a search! (and on that note I won't give in to the temptation to bang on about how much worse that is than it used to be, too....)

[Phil Bradley]

Hi Megan, thanks for that. Yes, you're absolutely right - Google *does indeed* buy up other companies, get rid of the competition and then close down the resource. Aardvark is a good example of this. It's really rather a shame, because the company purchased gets all excited, thinks that they are going to be doing good things, and the next they know, their little babe has been sacrificed on the Google money altar.