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This article is vapid.

"It's almost as if Google wants to end the document-centric open web as we have known it."

Actually, if this happened, Google's $40B+ in revenue would approach zero.

On Reader: Every week there's a new Reader replacement that pops up. I think in a year or two, Google Reader being shutdown will be seen as a positive thing for RSS.

"Apple will switch its default search engine to Bing....The web is a forest, and Google is burning it."

Maybe Apple will do this. It's possible though very unlikely considering Google's ability to monetize search and Microsoft investors' disappointment at losses in the Live division, but that's still not a move that immediately destroys Google.

Again, this article is completely vapid.

1 comments

I haven't found a single Google Reader replacement so far.

Sure, there are many alternatives for a subset of Google Reader's feature set but there is not a single full alternative so far. Google Reader is - soon was – not only a web GUI to subscribe to and read RSS feeds, it was also a search engine, an API for apps and until recently a social network.

I'm not really familiar with the parts of Google Reader that weren't just viewing RSS feeds, but have you looked at NewsBlur? I believe it has an API for apps and it has some sort of social network.

I have a paid NewsBlur subscription but rarely use it. There is an iOS app but it isn't comparable with Reeder and offline support in particular is missing. An API exist in theory but isn't used by other apps and services. The web GUI of Newsblur itself isn't performant and user-friendly IMHO, it reminds me of an old-style Windows GUI …

I'm going with Feedbin (https://feedbin.me/) and the iPhone version of Reeder (http://reederapp.com/iphone/) for the moment. Feedbin's web GUI is very simple but there's hope for progress. And the Reeder developer announced that he plans to add Feedbin support to the iPad and OS X versions of Reeder (http://reederapp.com/reader/). As a backend for syncing feeds with Reeder on the iPhone, Feedbin has been working well for me so far.

(BTW, Feedbin has no official trial but you can use it for three days without getting charged on your credit card.)

Have you tried the dev.newsblur.com interface? I'm really not fond of the normal interface but I like the dev one.

Yeah, almost exclusively … it's not much better though since it's mostly a new skin while the philosophy behind the web GUI remains the same.