Google Reader being shut down July 1

Google announced today that they will shut down Google Reader from July 1st. It is something that has been expected for some time now as Google have been shutting down services that were not generating income, since their change of CEO. When they announced some months ago that they were shutting down their Feedburner service, the writing was on the wall for Google Reader.

I’ve personally used Google Reader for many years and still do to this day as it’s functionality has evolved to allow other services use it’s API. When it first launched, being able to have all your RSS feeds aggregate in one location was fantastic, now we take it as a given with all the different feed readers that are available!

And with those many feed reader Apps is where this move by Google will be felt most. Many rely on syncing with a users Google Reader account for ease of set up. It will be a pain for many now to have to add individual feeds to make up for not being able to sync with their Google Reader account and personally I’ve dreaded this day coming!

One of those feed readers, Feedly, released a statement today saying that they have anticipated this day coming also and have been busy working on a system in the background that will allow a seamless transition for their users once Google pulls the plug on July 1. Feedly is a fantastic App on both Android and iOS and also has extensions for many of the main browsers. It is well worth checking out if you find yourself now looking for a new feed aggregator.

While it is the end of this chapter for Google Reader, it would be of no surprise at all if we see some sort of comparable service launch via Google+. Increasingly Google are forcing more and more users of their services to have a G+ account to interact with them.

Who would have thought they’d use their other services to increase numbers on their social network!