back to article Feedly coughs to cockup, KILLS Google+ login as users FLEE

Did Feedly just witness thousands of users unplugging from its service in disgust over its abrupt decision to force everyone to login via a Google+ ID? The answer to that question appears to be yes. Feedly said it had listened to the feedback - which looks to have been universally negative - and decided to reverse the tweak …

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  1. btrower

    Will they be forgiven.

    Should be no, but abused partners seem to never learn. Will she take him back and make a joke about how she tripped and fell against the doorknob? Probably.

  2. Martin Gregorie
    FAIL

    How to succeed in business

    ""We thought that because all the feedly users logged in to their feedly using a Google identity, switch to the Google+ identity would be simply mechanical - a different login popup," confessed a hapless company employee named Edwin."

    WTF? They only thought the transition would be 'simply mechanical'? Nobody could be arsed to try it to make sure? With an internal culture like that, its a wonder Feedly are still in business.

    1. Henry Wertz 1 Gold badge

      Re: How to succeed in business

      "WTF? They only thought the transition would be 'simply mechanical'? Nobody could be arsed to try it to make sure? With an internal culture like that, its a wonder Feedly are still in business."

      I assume they all already have Google+, and so saw no problem during testing. I have not enabled Google+ on my account that's for sure 8-). At least they did not do the "Well, we've decided this so suck it up" I've seen now and then. They realized they f'ed up and fixed it same day.

  3. Anonymous Coward
    Paris Hilton

    Better headline --

    Scientists bewildered to find that some people pay real dollars (or pounds) to Feedly to read their free news feeds.

    1. Havin_it

      Re: Better headline --

      My thoughts exactly. I wanted an RSS aggregator that was web-based for global accessibility, allowed grouping of feeds by criteria of my choice, and promotion / demotion of items by keyword or author. So I built one. Took a whole afternoon. SimplePie, jQuery and a few lines of my own for auth and database backend. Piece of piss, as I think it would be for the average Reg reader.

      I looked for an existing web app like this and was surprised not to find one. Do people actually enjoy being data-mined?

  4. frank ly

    Oh really?

    "... login more seamlessly across devices (Android)."

    I've always had seamless and permanent 'login' on my Android phone and tablet. Press Feedly icon -> get Feedly. On my PC browsers, I've set Firefox to always remember the appropriate cookies and never had to login again after that. (I have the Feedly add-on button).

    This was about having the user give default permission for Feedly to contact the people in their G+ circles, presumably so that Feedly could spam them with "Your friend is using Feedly - so should you." messages.

    1. Anonymous Coward
      Anonymous Coward

      Re: Oh really?

      Either that or Google is offering cash or some other incentive for companies to push their users to Google+.

      What's really weird is that they have made the API open so quite a few RSS Readers are using the Feedly API (I'm using NextGen Reader on both Windows 8.1 and WP8), so how did a Google+ logon benefit customers like me in the first place?

  5. Stevie

    Bah!

    Two Questions:

    a) Do people actually, really, in real life "flee" when these sorts of things happen? I mean, Facebook...

    2) What in the blistering blue blazes is "Feedly", and why couldn't a short phrase saying that have been part of the article viz: People are screaming and fleeing Feedly (a sort of small nuclear accelerator and day-care facility for Andriod device owners_ etc blither drool"

    Three Questions.

    1. Anonymous Coward
      Anonymous Coward

      Re: Bah!

      Feedly is a replacement for Google Reader.

      1. Anonymous Coward
        Anonymous Coward

        Re: Bah!

        > Feedly is a replacement for Google Reader.

        Ta much. I was wondering too while reading this in the course of my nightly procrastination session, but I admit I could not be arsed to even look it up. Still, I suppose their actual product/service is not that important in the context of the article's subject. The points seem to be that:

        a) Users, at least of a certain level of technical skill, do not see single sign-on as an advantage for public web services (as opposed, e.g., to company intranet).

        b) Customers appear not too comfortable with the idea of trusting Google (as well as, I presume, other big players), with such easily minable information as which websites they visit.

        I guess the moral from a website owner's perspective is that, independently of any third party authentication you may wish to use, you should always provide the option of having strictly local credentials. I for one quickly dismiss websites (and e-shops!) that want me to register/sign in with my (non-existent) Google or Facebook accounts. Plenty of fish in the pond, so I just go to someone else's site.

  6. h3

    When Google started doing the same type of tricks Facebook did/does then I stopped logging in to Google wherever possible. (Hardly ever when it comes to browsing).

    Just opening the Youtube app on Android (Which I almost never use signed me up to some spam emails from Google. What is more there was no way to revert it).

    Those type of tricks don't work if I am not logged in.

    Now I use the Amazon Appstore and a Google account with totally fake info on my tablet.

    Only use my Gmail accounts via real email clients.

  7. Mage Silver badge

    ANYONE USING SOME ELSES LOGGING SERVICE

    Is really really stupid. Zero understanding of

    A) Security. EVERY different site needs its own log-in. A universal Login is stupendously idiotic. Even more stupid than using the same password for everything.

    B) Why should someone have an account with an unconnected service. ESPECIALLY "bloodsuckers" like Google, Facebook, Twitter (they are parasites on the Internet, though at least Google is almost a worth while one, like leeches for certain skin disorders maybe ulcers)

    I stopped using a major UK media site because of this issue. The guy running it can't see what the problem is in

    A) Only allowing Google+ login

    B) Assuming everyone that wants to use his site is prepared to sign up to Google+

    1. User McUser
      Meh

      Re: ANYONE USING SOME ELSES LOGGING SERVICE

      A) Security. EVERY different site needs its own log-in. A universal Login is stupendously idiotic. Even more stupid than using the same password for everything

      I don't know... Seems like there are downsides to either way.

      A single sign-on is convenient as hell, though there is the problem of it being a single point of failure/compromise. On the other hand, using separate logins for every single web site is tremendously inconvenient (forcing users to have to remember yet another MF'ing username/password pair which inadvertently encourages password re-use) and requires every site operator to provide security to protect the login info many (most?) of whom are probably not as well suited to the task as, say, Google is.

      Note to web developers: Please stop making me pick a unique username; just use my email address. It's already unique and you're going to ask for it anyway so why not just use it as the username?

      1. Don Jefe

        Re: ANYONE USING SOME ELSES LOGGING SERVICE

        From a non-technical standpoint, anytime you have a safety feature (login in this case) that is a nuisance people will do phenomenally dumb things to streamline or circumvent that feature. In the login case, people will not use good password practices so they don't have to remember them or they'll make lists and stick them on everything.

        The average user will never follow good security practices and anything that can be done to make it easier on them is good overall for the IT industry.

      2. Donn Bly

        re: Please stop making me pick a unique username; just use my email address

        The reason is that we, as web developers, realize that people CHANGE their email addresses from time to time. They switch mail platforms, change employers, get married and change their name, get mad at google and go to yahoo, get mad at yahoo and go elsewhere, etc. If you use a web application, would you really want to dump all of your content and history just because your email address changed? For that reason many of us write applications that require a unique userid and allow you to attach your email address as a secondary identifier - allowing you to use either to log on.

        1. This post has been deleted by its author

      3. stratofish

        re: Please stop making me pick a unique username; just use my email address

        > Note to web developers: Please stop making me pick a unique username; just use my email address. It's already unique and you're going to ask for it anyway so why not just use it as the username?

        Your email address is semi-public information and gives away half of the username/password combo making it massively easier for someone malicious to try and brute-force a login.

        Ideally you would not only have a username to login but that username would not be shown at all anywhere on the site other than as part of the login process. The username then becomes almost as important as the password itself rather than just being an identifier and/or a target. Ask any celeb who has had their Twitter account hacked.

  8. alexmcm

    It is an annoying trend on websites to try and suck as much information out of users as possible. Certain discussion forums expect you to give a face book log in to comment on articles, or to 'like' it, before you can read more , or +1 it in Google or diggit or reddit or share it. Ahhh for the good old days when an old spam filled email account and a password was all that was required.

    1. Martin 47

      Ahhh for the good old days when an old spam filled email account and a password was all that was required.

      They are still here except people use gmail instead of yahoo or hotmail.

      1. vagabondo

        A surprising number of web-sites will accept "no.spam@example.com" as a valid mail address.

  9. SirWired 1

    Give NewsBlur a spin...

    Well, any disgruntled Google Reader refugees that now really aren't Feedly fans any more should give NewsBlur a try. It's a one-man shop (although it has been around for years, so it's not a new, green, dev either), and it's not bug-free, but uptime appears to be good, performance is fine, and it has some interesting features (along w/ Android and iOS apps), and the paid version is cheap.

    It's not perfect, but when I was looking for new RSS readers, without NewsBlur I probably would have gone to tt-rss.

    (Although I'll admit I never liked Feedly to begin with; I can appreciate what they were trying to accomplish with it, but just like the Metro GUI in Windows 8, it just ain't my thing. I really liked Google Reader and NewsBlur came the closest to replicating it while having performance that wasn't awful, and the multi-year track record was encouraging.)

  10. Hud Dunlap
    Mushroom

    El Reg doesn't seem to have a problem

    This is supposedly to stop nasty comments. El Reg doesn't seem to have a problem.

    I wanted to make a simple comment on a site and they wanted a google + password. Google wanted my phone number. Not a chance

    1. DavCrav

      Re: El Reg doesn't seem to have a problem

      "This is supposedly to stop nasty comments. El Reg doesn't seem to have a problem."

      No, we love nasty comments round here. You want links to some recent ones?

      1. Havin_it

        Re: El Reg doesn't seem to have a problem

        >No, we love nasty comments round here. You want links to some recent ones?

        OHMYGODYES. The pub kicked out early :(

        EDIT: Er, they're not mine are they?

  11. Vociferous

    Feedly wasn't wrong.

    > We thought that because all the feedly users logged in to their feedly using a Google identity, switch to the Google+ identity would be simply mechanical - a different login popup

    That is clearly the goal Google is working towards. It's very strongly discouraging using different log-ins to its different services (e.g. good luck keeping your Youtube account separate from your Google account, or doing anything beyond watching videos on Youtube without a Google+ account). It just isn't quite there yet.

  12. stratofish

    They still don't get it

    From their blog post - "The fact that the change is forcing users to create a Google+ profile and that Google+ is not available in some companies and on some Google Apps domains outweighs the benefit of being about to login more seamlessly across devices (Android)."

    No mention at all that a lot of people just plain don't want a Google+ account. Just blamed it on lack of availability.

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