I feel like the only reason we hear so much about Google Reader is because the main users were either journalists or bloggers, which creates an extremely disproportionate noise / (former) user ratio.
You are 900% correct. Having worked directly in the feed reader space, and trying to make money at it, and I can testify that the segment of online audience who even know what a feed is are a small club of tech news junkies and assorted wonks who all seem to know each other. They are a passionate crowd, but many companies have tried and failed at bringing that passion for feed reading to the mainstream, probably because most people don't read tech blogs all day long.
I feel the problem was more in the lack of curation and innovation of feed-delivery. FlipBoard seems to be successful without appearing to be a feed-reader on the surface. Google just missed the opportunity to make the feed reader more appealing to the average user.
that's exactly what happened. The biggest reason this was a bad mood for Google was because the entire tech journalist brain trust was so dependent on it. They spat on the people who can be the most fervent defenders of the company.
Obviously not. If they had left the space alone it would be fine now. Instead they "googled" it: came in and undercut everyone else, got a monopoly or near-monopoly position in the space and just canned the product. It would be like Walmart coming to your 2k-person town, opening a super center and then closing it down a few weeks after the last mom-n-pop owners shut down and moved away.
That's a fair point. That being said, a feed reader seems like a relatively simple product to build and there seems to be a lot of alternatives out there. What made Google Reader so special? (I'm asking genuinely, I have never used it before)
If it were simple, I wouldn't have had such a hard time replacing it. Google Reader did two things for me (1) correctly display the content of the RSS feeds I care about, (2) sync, so I could read from my home and work computers, and from my tablet without loosing my place. I read math blogs that use some WordPress plugin that generates images for formulas from LaTeX source and very few feed readers render the formulas at all (I also read several programming blogs and a small number of feed readers remove code blocks from the posts). In the end I gave up on sync, found an Android app that displays posts correctly and use that now.
The main thing for me wasn't the simple feed-reader aspect of it; it was the syncing.
I could use my choice of clients on different platforms and as Reader was effectively a monopoly, all the clients would sync with it, allowing me to view the same list of feeds whereever I was - and more importantly, keep those lists up to date with new feeds, and which articles I had read.
The major feature, at least for me, that the replacement services still cannot provide was full text search. It's something you'd expect from Google without thinking, but it involves indexing every article of every feed any user is subscribed to, allowing searching of the text within articles. For anybody who isn't a search engine, that's a huge undertaking and was an awesome feature.
First of all, it seemed to be the only choice left apart from two self-hosted services (tt-rss and selfoss/rsslounge). But it was also a good reader, it didn't cost anything, as a google product it seemed future proof, feed update was fast and the design simple and nice enough. Before its last update, it also had nice share-features.
And with the shutdown of Reader went any chance of me investing any of my time in Google+, or Docs, or Hangout, or any service they offer in the future.
Yes, I also mean Google Search. As a user I don't rely on it, there are alternatives. If they shut it down tomorrow I'd be sad because it's a stellar product but I will survive without it.
As a business owner I pay them through adwords so I don't expect them to shut it down any time soon.
The problem with GReader is that the industry never bothered to produce a quality alternative until now.
What is proportionate? I think it is the way the news and the web in general works. Wikipedia has extremely disproportionate pages about notorious things (that are not noise, obviously).
I am happy that journalists can amplify the voice of Google Reader users like me instead of talking about Justin Bieber.
Anecdotal evidence alert, but I am neither, and I never imagined the shuttering of a web app could actually make me feel sadness (as sad as that is). Google Reader was the most important part of the internet for me.
Honestly I didn't even know people were still using RSS readers let alone would get their pitch forks out when Google Reader went down. Between news emails, news aggregates like HN, and my friends sharing links I really don't have any problem filling the gaps and gave up on RSS readers a few years ago. Am I in a small group?
A lot of startups and product companies would kill to have a product used by countless journalists. I've written apps for a couple designed entirely to get more press. You hear more noise, but those users were more valuable influencers for the company to maintain relationships with as well making them more worth keeping.
"Google Reader founder Chris Wetherell said that if the idea came to him in today’s Google, he would leave the company and build it on his own rather than put it at the mercy of Google leadership."
Guess what dude?! If I were in that position and I were primarily worried about my project "being at the mercy of Google" (or any company that I don't have sufficient control over, for that matter), I would have left _anytime_. It should not be something you realize _today_. This is just whining over a "wrong" (presumably; assuming you would have pulled it off well) tradeoff you, yourself, made back in the day. It's not "today's Google vs. back then's Google". This is the tradeoff that you make anytime you decide to work for someone else; this is obvious and was obvious back in the day. If you had not seen it, the blame is wholly on you.
Google Reader would not have been a guaranteed success that it was without Google's resources. If one does not have the balls to take the risk of working at his or her own startup, he or she is not entitled to the benefits either. In hindsight, it's too easy to say "I would have gone and pulled it off independently".
I personally think Larry overall has been focusing on what matters and under his awesome leadership, Google is performing far better than Eric's time and this whole situation is not dissimilar to what happened at WWDC1997 and Steve's response to the random questioner in the audience:
"...the hardest thing is how does that fit in to a cohesive larger vision that's gonna allow you to sell 8 billion dollars... 10 billion dollars... a product a year."
> This is just whining over a "wrong" (presumably; assuming you would have pulled it off well) tradeoff you, yourself, made back in the day. It's not "today's Google vs. back then's Google".
I don't see any whining about a wrong, I see somebody saying that Google is different today from when it was back when he first made Reader. I don't see him regretting making Reader, just saying that today, because of cultural changes at Google, he'd do it outside of Google rather than inside of Google.
This is not somebody regretting their actions, this is somebody saying that Google's culture is different today then it was back then. Clearly you're a fan of this new culture, and that's just fine, but don't miscontrue his words.
I don't think it was a wrong decision either--hence the quotes. I think it was not easy to pull it off outside Google.
>> I see somebody saying that Google is different today from when it was back when he first made Reader
I do not deny that there might have been a fundamental culture change at Google. My point, precisely, is that a culture change is orthogonal to the fundamental fact that at someone else's company, they have the ultimate control over your invention. That's one big reason people go (and went) start start-ups. This is what has never changed and it's the employee's fault if they do not realize this when they accept their employment offer.
>> Clearly you're a fan of this new culture
I've never accepted an offer from Google. What I said does not necessarily imply that I'm a fan of the internal culture, or would have liked new Google management better if I were an employee. I am assessing the overall vision of Google leadership and their output from the outside and believe they are doing a very good job, and the credit for a company doing well should first and foremost go to the utmost leadership.
I like the new management better because they seem to have a much more coherent and focused vision, waste less resources, and while they obviously make mistakes too, overall, they have shown boldness in their actions. Even if I'm not particularly happy with the act of shutting down Google Reader, I like that they are bold and have the courage to execute what they think is right.
Cutting a fairly successful product does not directly imply good leadership, but it does imply boldness which is highly correlated with good leadership.
> This is what has never changed and it's the employee's fault if they do not realize this when they accept their employment offer.
My point is that he already realizes this. And that within one Google culture, he felt comfortable handing it all over to Google and taking advantage of all their resources and clout, and that in today's different Google culture, it's not a clearcut decision anymore, and in particular, pursuing a project that management sees as being at odds with the core mission of Google+ would probably be a bad idea. So I don't think you have any news for him, despite your initial claims.
If his primary concern had been Google Reader staying alive, he arguably had "false sense of comfort" back then, and this is exactly what I am saying. He made a mistake in evaluating risks.
The news is not for him, of course, as it would have been useless. The news is for anyone else who feels like safely innovating within a big company with _any_ culture today. There is a trade-off that you always take. Know it well when you make it. It can be much easier to leverage a big company's resources; on the other hand, your product may not follow your initial vision or get a bullet in its head. "The culture seemed cool back then so I was fooled by recruiter propaganda telling me I have control, blah, blah..." is not an excuse.
EDIT:
To clarify, all of this post presumed it would have been successful if he'd done it outside Google, something he seems to imply by his statement. I want to reiterate that I personally object to this very assumption, so I think he made the right trade-off, in which case, it's all fine, but he should not post a rant that implies doing it outside Google would have been catch-free.
Why in the world are you being a dick about this? The whining and lack of balls are all things you are brining to the article; they're not in the text.
The guy did what he thought was right at the time. He's not complaining about it. He's just saying that under today's conditions, he would have chosen differently.
He also didn't say he would have pulled it off independently. Just that today he would leave and build it on his own.
Given that other people are doing that successfully (I just paid good money to NewsBlur), it seems like a pretty sound evaluation to me. And I'll note that the guy did leave and do something independently, so it sounds like he has plenty of balls to me.
The title implies all that. At least that's how I see it.
My main point: in my view, the logical reasoning process that leads to the decision of inventing Google Reader inside Google or outside Google should be independent of Google culture at the time. It is a function of how much control you have over the company and your situation and goals, but not the company culture, so the correct decision with respect to the goals should not have changed over time. Logically, he should have always assumed that his product may get axed at the king's will and should have accounted for this risk in his calculations. The fact that leadership/culture can change against your will is a risk that existed from the start.
(To be honest, I don't have anything personal against this guy. I liked his product. What I meant to say was much more general when I mentioned "having balls": I really meant you cannot retrospectively claim credit for something you did not actually go and do, and the tone of that article irritates me in this respect. It might very well be the article writer's fault, not the guy himself.)
Actually, mehrdata, I think you might be reading a lot more into my statements than are actually present. While cultures evolve, I feel lucky we were able to make Reader within Google. I think that its being at Google made it a better product.
When asked if I would build it in today's Google my answer was "no" given that Google is clearly uninterested in this project at the moment. Seems kinda obvious, really.
I feel that epistasis more accurately guessed at the unpublished feelings I've had. The following are all things I think simultaneously right now...
Google is a great company
Google makes great things
Google is not interested in pursuing Reader
Communication around Reader's value (or how to improve it) within Google was unclear
There may be confusion for inventor-types within Google on how to proceed in today's Google, though that's possibly remedied by better communication internally
I'm glad you liked Reader. No need to guess about my actual thoughts about the past since I can summarize: Thanks to a great company with great people, Google Reader was made into a service that was many times better than I ever could have built alone in my apartment. There's no way to know if that success could have been achieved somewhere else. Everyone working on Reader knew it could have been cancelled at any time. It wasn't cancelled for a long time. I'm glad we got to experiment with the idea and the experience.
Thanks for your reply. I'm glad you cleared this up. I'm sorry if I read too much through your statements.
The last feeling you mentioned is totally aligned with I was trying to say: to emphasize if you are an inventor type, you'd want to evaluate the risk of serving at the pleasure of the king carefully; it isn't necessarily a bad value proposition, but it certainly carries the risk of getting derailed or axed. Same goes for people who sell their companies to others; you cannot expect them to move forward with your initial vision.
Wait. When asked if you would build it in Today's Google, your answer would be no, because Google is clearly uninterested in this project at the moment. :). I mean really, if Google is uninterested, it's Google who effectively said No isn't it?
Er, no. At the risk of getting all Primer on this, the hypothetical situation posed allowed for a history where Reader was never invented but somehow magically I retained the knowledge of how Google would have evolved in the (hypothetical-to-them) event Reader had been launched there.
Given that knowledge, I certainly wouldn't choose to build it in today's Google given I'd be armed with data suggesting it would not be supported. This point, while kind of mindless and diverting, doesn't seem very useful, though.
Actually, there's a bunch of causality minefields here; we should both be concerned that we could inadvertently violate Novikov's self-consistency principle. My conclusion is for us to back away slowly from the thread – I don't want either of us to accidentally become our own grandfathers.
> Guess what dude?! If I were in that position and I were primarily worried about my project "being at the mercy of Google" (or any company that I don't have sufficient control over, for that matter), I would have left _anytime_.
If you don't have a boss, your boss is either your VC, or your customers. Guess what - they can suck more than Google (at least, Google back in 'the day').
Au contraire. This is exactly the Google of today vs back then's Google.
The Google of today focuses only on social and mobile and, GoogleX aside, will not green-light anything that will not benefit those two. You can ask anybody who works there how the 20% project time policy has changed or how certain teams have all the resources and cool stuff while others struggle.
Android under Sundar Pichai is not much better than it was under Andy, although I'm glad the latter is gone. And Vic Gundotra, well, he's one big hypocrite.
Google is still a great place to work, but the politics and trying to create the next Facebook have pretty much ruined its culture.
At the same time, I'm pretty sure an RSS Reader founded today inside Google would go the way of Wave.
If Reader was ultimately unmonetizable, I'll cry when its gone, but I don't think anyone should feel entitled to a free service.
I'm not a Google employee, but I think Reader is poor measure for how "open" Google is right now. I mean, christ, with Project Loon, I don't think they are any worse, however they have a limited amount of engineers and maintaining an RSS application in 2013 doesn't seem like a huge priority.
>If Reader was ultimately unmonetizable, I'll cry when its gone, but I don't think anyone should feel entitled to a free service.
I don't think that it was not monetizable, any less than GMail is. Perhaps there were high, hidden costs in maintaining such a large feed database that would mean that a comparable revenue stream from Reader would not pay for itself nearly as much as GMail does.
I think that in the end it's just that Google did not care about the Reader users. They didn't need them, there wasn't enough of a stink when they said they were going to get rid of Reader, either internally or externally.
I highly doubt it's even close to 90%. If it were, I think you're right that it's much less likely it would have been shut down. There are many very technical people out there that just don't find RSS fits with their workflow.
Personally, I have a list of blogs I like to read in a couple bookmarks folders, and when I feel like reading them, I'll go to the bookmarks and see what's up. I don't really care if I miss posts, so I have no real need for a system that will catalog them all for me. I have tried a couple times to get into it, but just found it wasn't for me. (As a means of consuming media. I do use RSS for automating various processes, as well as the occasional RSS-to-email when I really need notifications for something (like rare classifieds posts I'm searching for).) Anyway, my point is, I'm pretty technical - I run a web based company and embrace plenty of modern technologies - and I never got into RSS. I'm fairly certain the majority of Google employees don't make regular use of an RSS reader either. (Although I imagine a significant minority do as well.)
You think low-level employees can stop a change like that? I talked to a Googler who used Reader; he's very upset about it, obviously, but said they internally communicated the reasons they were shutting down the service and they made sense.
"Perhaps there were high, hidden costs in maintaining such a large feed database that would mean that a comparable revenue stream from Reader would not pay for itself nearly as much as GMail does."
For search, they already scrape the entire web, including RSS feeds.
The large database cost is noticing that people who follow JGCs feed also tend to follow the feeds from the Chris's, furthermore they're apparently real human beings and have been reading for awhile, therefore when optimizing search engine results I'd put something linked to by JGC much higher than something linked by rgfbebgep240895i who is probably a SEO spammer rather than a human.
If you'd prefer a physics example, admittedly popularity is not truth, but you Might be able to add valuable data to search engine results by a careful examination of exactly who subscribes to Shetl-Optimized vs Backreaction vs Not Even Wrong vs all of them, and how long people subscribe, and other blogs they read...
Its the relationship between my set of feeds and your set of feeds that "should be" useful, not just the feeds themselves.
Something no one has discussed yet is the whole topic might just be a big F you to the NSA. I'm sure they'd love a subscriber list of "from the bunker" or "zerohedge" and GOOG has to either give it or give up on the product so they have nothing to give. Can't give up on search results, too much money, but reader might have been expendable.
I bet it was monetizable. Would it have been profitable? I bet yes, it could even have been profitable. Would it have been insanely profitable, or have the profit scale exponentially based on use? Probably not.
Had they say $50/year, loads of people would have paid it without a second thought. A $20m revenue stream overnight is probably not enough for the G though.
Collecting money is does not equal pure profit. Money has its own overhead and headaches associated with it. One being that you can't just ignore the service as they had been for the past year. People who pay expect uptime, new features, etc.
That's to say nothing of the administrative overhead.
I feel that a company like Google must have considered that option in their decision making process and felt there was a good reason to dismiss it.
I made the distinction between monetizable (yes, they can charge money for it) and profitable (they can have money left over after all the administrative overhead and upkeep). Yes, I've no doubt those were taken in to consideration. I just get the feeling that Google doesn't want to bother dealing with things unless there's extremely large profits to be had, vs just profits. And that's kind of sad, in a way (assuming it's true, but it seems to be).
> I'll cry when its gone, but I don't think anyone should feel entitled to a free service.
But... it's not 'free' so much as 'doesn't cost cash'. There's plenty of cost in adopting a tool like that, an integrating it in to your life. And... it's not like Google was getting 0 in return - the usage data they could have collected (and probably were to some degree) was quite high, and they pretty much exist to collect usage behaviour and use algorithms to make money from that data. But they chose not to. Instead of continuing to foster the notion of people writing content on their own blogs, and simply giving people a tool to search it (ala google search), taking away that tool and pushing people to write that content directly in g+ gives them a number of advantages over any other search service that wants to even consider trying to come close to comprehensive search. this is AOL walled garden 3.0.
Maybe they should have tried pay for access? I would have paid. Would have been a bit like taking its usership hostage, but it remains the only rss reader that fit my needs perfectly.
I don't work there, but I think it is still around. When I was considering whether to accept an offer there, everyone I asked said they had 20% time, although people used it different ways, and some people just did normal work in their 20% time. Can a Googler confirm?
It definitely existed when I was there a few months ago. Many people use the opportunity to explore possibilities of working with new teams in the future.
It depends on your manager. If your manager is OK with it or unaware, then you have 20% time. On the other hand, there are managers who throw anyone with a 20%T under the bus in the Perf Room (quarterly stack ranking).
It can be an effective way to work out a transfer. Google's transfer process is broken-- you are fucked without a high-level (preferably Director or VP) sponsor-- and that requires that you kill it on an audition project. In practice, though, this usually ends up requiring more than 8 hours per week, so you're either working long hours or putting less than 80% into your assigned project, which is a gamble.
(michaelochurch will never take advice to pull his head in, so this is for the benefit of others who may be misled by his warped view of Google.)
- There's no such thing as a "Perf Room" as a special thing. calibration happens in regular meeting rooms.
- There quite possibly are some bad managers, but they are few and far between. There's plenty to gripe about at Google, but immediate managers are very rarely the topic.
- The transfer process is not broken, though it is not a revolving door either. You don't require high level sponsorship, though high level folk will be required to sign off on transfers for obvious reasons (what if 50 people all suddenly changed to teams in particular office?)
- 20% time is a great way to "audition" with a potential team you might like to transfer to, but I have never heard anyone but michaelochurch describe taking appropriate 20% time as "a gamble". There are naturally times when your manager might ask you to defer 20% work (occasional crunch time, or similar), but that's still a rarity.
Yes, I've acknowledged that almost none of the Google campuses have dedicated Perf Rooms. Most offices just use a regular conference room to get their Perfing on.
Really, when a Google manager threatens to "take you into the Perf Room", it's purely metaphor. Calibration applies to all employees (not just the disfavored ones) and no one is actually in that room as they are "calibrated", so the phrase has no meaning other than as a general-purpose threat.
I've heard plenty of stories about bad managers at Google: people given low calibration scores to keep them captive on undesirable projects, people threatened with PIPs for failing to fall in line on RNCH, and one case of a manager who used phony performance problems to find things out about peoples' health and personal issues, then exploit the knowledge in sadistic ways.
The transfer process is pretty damn broken at Google. A company with that much in the way of resources has absolutely no excuse not to use open allocation. It's actually an ethical problem. If you're poor and fighting for survival, you may not be able to afford open allocation. If you're a rich as Google, it's an ethical imperative.
20% time is a huge gamble. It might be one worth making, sure, but it's dishonest to say there's no risk. If your manager doesn't get a lot of calibration points and you have a 20% time project, you'll often be thrown under the bus so more "loyal" reports can get a decent score. That's just the way stack ranking works. If one person on each team is to be shot in the head, the person perceived as least loyal (flight risk/20%T) will be the first one gone.
Beyond the non-compete clause, there also is usually a "assignment-of-inventions" agreement. Which, to some degree, means if you are in a role where you might "invent" things, anything you think of while at the company is owned by the company whether you told them about it or not. The contracts can get complicated: if you have an idea completely unrelated to the company's business, and can prove you did not use any company or equipment or time, you might be ok.
Saying "I had the idea for Reader but I would not tell Google because they would ruin it, and I would instead quit and form my own company" is exactly what these agreements are aimed at.
You're not allowed to compete with the company you used to work for or use your "proprietary knowledge" to undercut it. There's lots of potential reasons companies claim, some legit and some not:
1. I have training or specialized skills I acquired at the companies expense and I will be using them to compete against the company.
2. I have "insider knowledge" that they believe would amount to corporate espionage.
3. I know something that could cause harm to the company or its clients (ex. I used to do tech support for a series of store chains and I was not allowed to work for them upon leaving because my knowledge would make it trivially simple for me to steal from the store).
Those are just some of the thought processes. I don't think it's that you couldn't make money self employed, but you couldn't make it doing the same thing you were doing for your former employer (i.e. making a feed reader).
I think you just can't "compete" with your former employer for X years after leaving, i.e. building a product that is doing the same thing one of their products is doing.
It's called a no-compete clause, and has very specific language about not making a product that'd be in the same space as something the company you just left makes.
Non-compete clauses are very limited and hard to enforce in California (where most Google employees reside.) Assignment-of-invention might apply but if the individual has left the company (rather than building it in their free time while still employed) it would probably be very hard to prove that the original idea happened while they were still in the employ of the company, unless they documented it and shared those docs internally. (i.e. you can't pitch the idea internally, and then if rejected quit and build it yourself.)
I don't understand - what is the fuss about Google Reader? I tried using it a few times. I prefer reddit to it. Would someone please explain what is so special about aggregating RSS?
Did it have a trainable classifier we could teach to label RSS items or anything else besides simple management of what was read?
Well, personally, I'd had hundreds of sites entered into it and the read tracking was much better than Reddit. On Reddit I have to vote on anything I want to disappear, Google Reader did it auto. Not that I would switch off anything I have entered that much data and state into anyway. It would have taken over a week to catch up on read status on all sites and switch over properly with no read queue on any of them.
Users putting data in is the best way to get them to stick around. It's also terrible for your rep when you kill the product like this.
Let's take it one level higher: is your question really "what is the fuss about RSS?" or is it your original? If you already understand RSS yet don't 'get' Google Reader, I understand that - I'm right there with you. There were/are far better ways to consume RSS for me and so GR was nothing special. If you don't 'get' RSS, then that's too big of a topic for here. You would want to search more about it.
Sorry if this comes across as pedantic - that's not my intent!
I understand RSS and I have written programs that parse RSS feeds. I was just wondering why was Google's aggregation better. It seems it has to do with the management of feeds and read/unread items, but that is just a basic interface.
I would have loved to see auto classification, user defined topics and content recommendation. That would have made a much smarter RSS tool.
I think Google would be wise to offer a discontinued product to the creator. If they have no interest in Reader any more, then Wetherell should be offered the product.
Possibly he would need to pay something for it (preferably over a long term) or he would be given the source, but absolutely no users / user data.
That way they get innovators to dream big ideas like AdSense, but if those ideas are rejected or later shuttered, the innovator gets to keep his idea.
Neat things do come of it though. Code Search, for example, ended up as an technical explanation [1], which I found fascinating, and example implementation [2], which I found useful.
That's my point though: just because a retired product is heavily tied to Google's infrastructure doesn't mean that they couldn't release something useful out of it.
He probably doesn't realize that it would have never been as successful without Google's data power. So yes, he could have opened his own company and released a Reader, just that no one would come to know about it.
Small correction: Actually, I've long asserted that Google's infrastructure and talent are key reasons that Reader was successful. I think that neither in the interview, nor the article, did I suggest that – though I could be mistaken.
There's a big difference between "Google Reader Founder" and "A Google employee who was in charge of Google Reader project". Android was "founded". Google reader was not.
> ...if the idea came to him in today’s Google, he would leave the company and build it on his own rather than put it at the mercy of Google leadership.
I wonder how much this rings true for anyone currently at Google.
