It has been announced that Google is about to close some services, especially Google reader, which is a service allowing you to read RSS feeds. Of course, this is not the only one RSS reader, but still, the sobriety of the design and the specificities were clear. But we don’t have to worry, many others are ready to host our feeds in order to read them.

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There are many solutions when you want to find a way to read an RSS feed. First, you can read the code in XML format. Not very user friendly… That is why many readers have appeared, in order to make the reading more practical. It has been 10 years that Google reader was born. Before and between the creation of the service by the Mountain View company and now, RSS readers existed but didn’t have the same audience. On another hand, Google decided to stop offering this service because there are less and less people using this service. A petition is already online to prevent Google from stopping this service. The other solution could be to give the source code to a community who would update it when it is necessary.

Before the 1st of July, you will have to change your reader. Google informs you how to export your feeds towards other readers. There are many options, you can host a reader solution in a website. In this case, you would be interested by Tiny Tiny RSS. If you prefer to have an application that is added in your navigator, you can use Feeder. If you prefer to go on the Internet, you can use Netvibes. Finally, you can put it on Mozilla Thunderbird for example. There is plenty of solutions for different cases. Some may have a good surprise and find a reader that fits better for the use they have of the RSS feeds.

It is not the first time that Google takes applications off. It is the case for iGoogle for example. This is a warning for reminding that they do whatever they want, and that they don’t care the fact that you enjoy using their tools. The disappearing of some services available in the web can make a company depending too much on it and bring it to bankrupcy if they don’t have another solution and that the tool you use is no more available…

As a conclusion, Google reader is leaving the stage, which will make some changes in certain cases. Some Web services are nice to use, but it is not always endless, companies depending on such services should always remember this and try to develop other options if the service they use is the only possibility for them to work.

A propos de Pierre Bolle