By With news that Google Reader is shutting down many users have been scrambling to find replacement services and taking other courses of action to prepare. Many have looked to Feedly, a service that was powered by Google Reader but will soon be offering a seamless transition to a standalone service once Google puts the online RSS reader to rest July 1st. So many folks were looking to go that route that they brought Feedly’s servers to a crawl — it’s something they might want to get cleared up before the summer hits.
In the meantime, Google Reader is still open, and folks hold on to hope that Google will listen to outcries from the site’s passionate fans. A petition was started on Change.org urging Google to reconsider the move, and in less than 24 hours it’s already gotten over 67,000 signatures as of the time of this writing. The goal is 100,000, and at this pace it definitely looks like it can go above and beyond that.
That said, a big petition doesn’t guarantee Google will listen or act, or at least not in the way that we want. Still, it doesn’t hurt to try, and if there’s any big company that’s responsive to user outcry, support, and passion, we’d expect it to be Google. Put your name on the dotted line at Change.org and see if we can get El Goog to reconsider shuttering its doors on our beloved service.
I think it’s worth taking a look at keepgooglereader.com too, who have a similar but more innovative effort that would hope to see google make the code for reader open source so that it could become a community funded, and run project.
I like this petition better. Thanks for the link!
This is also a great idea. I think Google would do this. They open sourced a lot of projects that they no longer support. Sky Maps is one I know they axed but open sourced it. Can’t see why Google would throw up a stink about this idea.
Even though I like the idea of Open source but.. who will be responsible for the server/resoures cost to keep it alive?
The petition is probably so effective because everyone who uses reader is getting articles about it in their feed haha
An hour later after this article almost 72K
Oh… What’s Google Reader? An RSS feed? I still don’t fully understand what an RSS feed is. I keep seeing something like streaming your news and facebook post and blogs all in one place.
So I’ve always thought an RSS feed was something like Pulse app.
I know Google don’t have to respond. I remember when us developers bitched about Honeycomb and why wasn’t the SC released. Google responded I have faith they will to this one. At least a reason why the ax was given. Maybe something is in store. Facebook is getting a facelift maybe Google will involve G+ with Google reader abilities. Remember when Larry Page said before Steve Jobs death he talked to him. One thing he told Page was to reduce your services. Maybe Google has a Method to their madness. IDK
Move on people, its an RSS feed, there are hundreds of decent replacements, get over it children.
How will this affect Currents, since feeds are populated via Reader?