back to article The Old Reader evicts Google Reader refugees

Google Reader alternative The Old Reader has told all of its new members to go away in two weeks. To understand how we get here, remember that back in March Google announced it would kill Reader, its popular browser-based RSS reader. That was bad news for several hundred thousand (or maybe a handful of million) users, who like …

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  1. FrankAlphaXII
    Unhappy

    Glad I didn't bother signing up with them. But after using google reader for a few years and with its closure, I think I might just be done with RSS. I'm not paying for it like kouio wants to charge people, the old reader are acting like hipster dickheads to their new users, so whatever. Its just not worth the hassle.

    I dont have to use RSS anymore, and at one time I did, afterward it had just turned into a force of habit for monitoring news from varied sources easily. Now, its not so easy. If the only way to win is not to play, and I guess I'm no longer playing.

    1. Anonymous Coward
      Anonymous Coward

      "the old reader are acting like hipster dickheads"

      I haven't used the service so I don't know what they've been doing, but really? They're offering (or at least were offering) a service for free and you're calling them hipster dickheads for it?

      1. Anonymous Coward
        Anonymous Coward

        name calling of people providing free service

        sadly way too common in the open source world.

        1. xperroni
          Childcatcher

          Re: name calling of people providing free service

          Yes, because drawing people into a system and then telling them to sod off without appeal or recourse isn't dicky in the least.

          Complaining about it, however, is.

          1. Annihilator
            Paris Hilton

            Re: name calling of people providing free service

            "Yes, because drawing people into a system and then telling them to sod off without appeal or recourse isn't dicky in the least."

            Caveat emptor - it's free, so what do they possibly owe anyone? If they were being dicky, they'd have shuttered the service with no way to export your details - they haven't.

            As the old (new?) adage goes, if it's free then you're not the customer - you're the product. In this instance, you're neither.

            1. xperroni
              Holmes

              Re: name calling of people providing free service

              Caveat emptor - it's free, so what do they possibly owe anyone?

              I don't owe you anything either, however you'll most likely not like it if I'm a dick to you. You might even speak your mind about it, too.

              1. Annihilator
                Headmaster

                Re: name calling of people providing free service

                "I don't owe you anything either, however you'll most likely not like it if I'm a dick to you. You might even speak your mind about it, too."

                Not quite - in this case, "being a dick" has apparently been defined as withdrawing your free services from me. The only services you appear to be giving me is the ability to read your comment. You'll find that if you withdraw that, I won't be in the slightest bit bothered.

                1. xperroni
                  Joke

                  Re: name calling of people providing free service

                  Not quite - in this case, "being a dick" has apparently been defined as withdrawing your free services from me.

                  Apparently – but alas, no.

                  It was dicky of them to provide a public service, then withdraw it from all but themselves and a few chosen chaps.

                  Because peopled felt dicked with, they took to the interwebs to vent their frustration.

                  The fact there is no economical basis to contest their move changes neither dicking nor anger therewith .

                  At any rate: providing, then withdrawing a free service, is but one myriad ways people can be dicks to each other. I could certainly think of some other way of being a dick to you, and if you had no way to hit back, you'd probably feel frustrated about it, and perhaps even complain to someone.

                  I hope this settles the matter. Now go, and dick no more.

        2. FrankAlphaXII

          Re: name calling of people providing free service

          >>sadly way too common in the open source world.

          I wish this was Open Source, if it was, we download the code and then run our own instances. It isn't.

          And their "We're thinking about open sourcing it" rings hollow coming from people who touted their service as a Google Reader replacement, and then pull the rug out from under their users (except of course for the ones they like and the ones who joined before 13 March), instead of monetizing it or selling it to someone who has the will to monetize it.

          But no, I'm the asshole for expecting consistency from someone providing a service that up until now was positioning its self as a replacement for a product I knew and loved.

    2. Sphinx86

      Digg It

      Feedly isn't too bad, but I've got on board with Digg Reader (https://digg.com/reader). Currently free, looks and smells like Google Reader - well worth a shot.

      1. goldcd

        Re: Digg It

        Indeed.

        Personally I landed with Feedly - but no great loyalty on my part yet.

        Actually, that's quite unfair of me, they've nearly filled the gaping void left by Reader, and haven't tried to tap me for anything yet (despite my being reasonably open to it).

    3. Rob Moir

      So you don't want to pay anyone anything for it and people who can't give you it for free are "hipster dickheads".

      At no point in any of that does it occur to you that maybe it's *you* that are not worth the hassle does it?

      1. FrankAlphaXII

        I didn't say I didn't want to pay for it. If I had the option to, I would. I didn't explicitly say so, but I most certainly would. It seemed like a good service, but I was kind of waiting to see if they solved their outage problems first. As I said, I don't have to use RSS anymore. Its just easy.

        But unless they like you or you joined before 13 March, you're not staying. Read their press release yourselves.

  2. lupine

    home brew

    i've stuck tiny tiny rss (http://tt-rss.org/redmine/projects/tt-rss/wiki) on one of my servers. bit of a daft name but it's a powerful piece of coding. working very well for my friends and myself. it has some slick android clients too.

    1. frank ly
      Happy

      Re: home brew

      How many more users could your server accept? Have you thought about embedding adverts? Oh, the possibilities.

      1. Chewi
        Devil

        Re: home brew

        I installed TT-RSS in single user mode. It's mine, all mine!!

    2. Ross Nixon

      Re: home brew

      Even better, run Tiny Tiny RSS on Red Hat's free 'OpenShift' cloud. Then you can have your own site and access it from anywhere. It only takes about 20 mins to set up, and no coding required. Going good for me so far (2 days only).

    3. Jim 59

      Re: home brew

      What kinda server ? Google is telling me tt-rss is too slow on a Rpi.

  3. 142

    Reading the blog post...

    Reading the blog post makes it all the more understandable why companies like Google take the PR hit of shutting down popular services that aren't a clear benefit for their core purpose, even if the financial costs of keeping it running aren't significant.

    Keeping old services running must continually gum up the management process of the overall operation, and really tie-up good personnel that could be better utilised elsewhere...

    1. Nagy, Balázs András

      Re: Reading the blog post...

      Actually, the thing with Reader was that it didn't have really any support or good personnel. But it did cost quite a lot, as you might imagine: worldwide storage of every rss feed there is, searchable, with every user having different tags on each of their feeds and feed items... there was a good post about this from an ex-reader googler on a website. Let's just say rss might just be text, but it is way too much text if you take EVERY rss feed of the world combined.

  4. jb99

    Hmm

    Well ok, I understand this.

    No point spending so much money and effort making a service that's stretched far beyond it's means.

    However I sent them a significant (to me) donation 2 weeks ago or so. I'll not be entirely happy if I then get kicked off, but I guess it was a donation, not a payment for services, so I won't get too upset.

    1. AceRimmer

      You might be OK

      the site will be shut for all but those its operators like and/or opened their accounts before March 13th, 2013,

    2. Anonymous Coward
      Anonymous Coward

      Re: Hmm

      Looks like you're OK.

      We will whitelist everybody we know personally, along with all active accounts that were registered before March 13, 2013. And of course, we will migrate all our awesome supporters and people who donated to keep the project running (if you sent us bitcoins, please get in touch to get identified).

  5. allanp73

    The site http://www.yioop.com has a rss reader and is working on a full replacement for the late Google News Reader.

  6. JohnSaunders12

    Hm very sad news. I have been using OldReader for over a month. Now I will try to switch to http://silverreader.com which seams like decent alternative.

  7. coderguy
    WTF?

    Stop whining and do it yourself.

    I don't see what the fuss is all about. Thunderbird, Netvibes or any of the other multitude of RSS clients do the same thing just fine.

    IMO, It's sensible to use an RSS solution you can control, not a free service in cloud that can be pulled at any time.

    1. jb99

      Re: Stop whining and do it yourself.

      I like the ability to read some articles at home, some on my phone web browser, some at work, and have it know what I read. Not sure if any installed programs can do that?>

  8. David Given

    inoreader

    I switched to The Old Reader, but found it was just too slow and buggy; eventually I found inoreader.com, which seems to do everything Google Reader did and is lightweight and Just Works for me. (It even has an 'open page in background' button!)

  9. Dazzz

    Overheads

    The Old Reader was rather slow and clunky but i've been using it for a couple of months and it was useable, unfortunately I didnt make the cut and so I switched over to Feedly last night which seems to have improved a lot since I last looked at it, hopefully that will stay the pace.

  10. Jim 59

    Opportinity for el Reg

    The Register has been running a robust platform with that many users and never goes down. How about it ? Makes sense for a news site to run a News Reader service. And you can sack all the reporters and just steal stuff from The Inquirer news feed.

  11. spencer

    selfoss - the soloution I fell upon.

    After trying all the Google Reader alternatives and not liking *any* I stumbled across selfoss, it's a ridicously easy-to-set-up RSS reader that you host yourself.

    Stuck it on the Raspberry pi, got myself a free .tk domain name and that's it.

    I seriously recommend you try it if you're still stuck for a Reader alternative.

    http://selfoss.aditu.de/

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