Goodbye Google Reader, Hello The Old Reader

Political Realities ^ | 03/15/13 | LD Jackson

[LD Jackson]

I'm not saying my Internet habits are indicative of the normal person, but there are a few services I depend on to keep up with the news that is important to me. Facebook isn't at the top, ranking well below other services, such as the National Weather Service and Google Reader. I am sure many of my readers are familiar with Google Reader. I use it to keep up with the blogs and news services that help keep me informed on the news of the day. Via RSS feeds, it was a simple thing to load one page and see as much news and information as I wanted to see. You can imagine my disappointment when I loaded Google Reader in Firefox a couple of mornings ago and discovered a pop-up message. I was informed that Google Reader would be going the way of the dust in the wind, closing down on July 1.

In my search for a replacement for Google Reader, I discovered one thing. The Internet is awash with blog posts and comments about Google's move to shut down the service. You can even find a petition to sign, if you are so inclined. The fact is, Google is in business for one reason. If they do not make a profit, they can not continue to stay in business. Because their analysis showed a decline in the people who were using Google Reader, they made the decision to shut the service down. It is well within their rights to do so, as it was with Feedburner, which I abandoned some months ago. That doesn't make a lot of us happy, but such is life. With the number of comments I have seen, complaining about the shutting down of Google Reader, I can't help but wonder if Google made a mistake with their analysis, but again, it is their choice to do so.

I was aghast at the news. I have looked for replacements for Google Reader before and was never satisfied, always coming back to old faithful. Not following my favorite blogs and news sites is not an option, so I began a new search for a replacement for Google Reader in earnest. I have already tried Netvibes or Bloglines, as well as Feedly and others. As I was browsing through the choices, trying to figure out which direction to go, I came across a service that purported to be similar to the old Google Reader, before the updated user interface that so many us hated. Aptly named The Old Reader, it allows you to sign up via Google and will import your feeds from Google. It is a little slow at the moment, mainly because of the sudden influx of new users who are looking for something to replace Google Reader, but it seems to hold a lot of promise. For the time being, I am sticking with The Old Reader and will give it time to go through its growing pains. If you were using Google Reader to follow Political Realities, I invite you to do the same on The Old Reader. Who knows, it may be we will all find Google has done us a service and forced us to find a better alternative to the RSS reader so many of us were fond of.

I know many of you follow Political Realities via the email newsletter, but from looking at my statistics on Google Reader, I know there are more than a few who were using it to keep up with my posts. Let me know in the comments how you plan to deal with this sudden and unforeseen change by Google.