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0 pointsdylan6046y ago0 comments

>After they axed Reader, I stopped using anything from the G

I never used Reader, but did anything else come along to fill the void? I ask as I am curious on the market when G kills a product. When G kills off a product, does the rest of the world just assume that if G couldn't make it work then it must not be worth doing? I know HN readers were vocal about the death of lots of G products, but HN readers are edge cases in the grand scheme.

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12 comments · 4 top-level

ghaff6y ago· 5 in thread

There are other RSS readers but RSS as a stand-alone thing that people use (where “people” was always somewhat of a niche) has largely withered in the face of social media. Much as the tech crowd likes to complain about Reader’s Denise, it was at least in part a response to RSS’s decline not the cause.

dylan604OP6y ago

So you're giving G credit for recognizing the world progressing before the rest of the world realizes? Or that the users just adapted to the loss of the product? Just trying to compare G killing software to Apple killing hardware. The transition away from SCSI and ADB to things like USB/FireWire/Thunderbolt, USB-A to USB-C, etc riles the masses during the transition, but ultimately it is the better decision.

ghaff6y ago

To a first approximation, the "rest of the world" never knew what RSS was. Yes, Google kills random projects that have a passionate fan base. But they're mostly not products that actually have broad mainstream appeal.

I'm not really giving Google "credit" for anything. It's just that a lot of people want to identify a bogeyman in RSS's demise. But that bogeyman is really the collective us. There are still plenty of RSS feeds and at least a couple of decent clients for anyone who want to use RSS today.

scarface746y ago

RSS has not “withered”. True very few people use it, but every site still supports rss where it makes sense.

ghaff6y ago

Very few people using it seems the very definition of withering. Yes, a lot of sites and blog software etc. still default to offering RSS feeds. (Which I take advantage of from time to time and it's presumably used behind the scenes for various purposes.) But that's hardly a ringing endorsement of the role of RSS in today's world.

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colejohnson666y ago

As ghaff mentioned, it’s the very definition. COBOL is still used by some old banks, but you’d still say it’s popularity has “withered.”

popup216y ago· 3 in thread

> did anything else come along to fill the void?

Yep. I'm using ol'faithful: Mozilla Thunderbird

wnoise6y ago

Doesn't satisfy "synced history across any device".

popup216y ago

Unnecessary for my use case. I batch my news consumption in a single session.

scarface746y ago

Feedly.