RIP Google Reader

Google Reader was shut down today. I am just one of many who have written about this topic, but I still want to put in my 2 cents.

As someone who likes to think of himself as a "high-information" person, Google Reader absolutely changed the way I use the internet. The ability to aggregate all my favorite blogs and news sources into one page was a game changer; it saved me soooo much time.

I can still remember when I discovered RSS feeds 5 years ago and figured out how to use them. I was
waiting for an experiment to finish and obsessively refreshing some fantasy football advice site that I knew was going to post updated rankings at any moment. I thought to myself "If only there was some way for me to be notified when they updated their site." Clogging up my inbox with subscriptions was a non-starter for me... I wanted a way to keep them separate. I remembered seeing those little orange RSS buttons all over the place and decided to look into what they did. The rest is history. Google Reader quickly became my RSS app of choice due to its simplicity and ease-of-use. I didn't need bells and whistles, I just wanted something efficient. Closing down that last functioning tab of my reader feed was like closing the casket of a loved one (in nature, if not in magnitude, of course).

Google's decision to discontinue Reader still puzzles me a little. The best explanation of what happened that I have found is here. For my purposes, however, there still isn't a better tool out there than RSS feeds keep me up-to-date with my list of sites that keep me informed about the things I am interested in. I don't want to miss posts and I don't want to manually check all of the sites constantly. For now I have found comfort in the arms of Feedly, and it has been... okay. I still miss the Platonic Ideal of simple, efficient, clean layouts that was Google Reader.