No localization, I'm not too interested in USA news.

For a news aggregator that adapts to your interests, try niflet.com. I'll add any decent feeds people want.

I have been using Twitter/Flipboard+Instapaper for a while now  as a replacement for traditional RSS readers. I do use Tweetbot but most twitter clients do have "Read Later" applications integrated.

Caveat: Still early[1], less featured than Google/RSS Reader. But also more.[1] <a href="http://memamsa.com/start/gr" rel="nofollow">http://memamsa.com/start/gr</a>

Is this any good? Do you have the ability to customize it yourself?

Agreed. I moved to Fever ages ago, never looked back. Works great on my iPhone too.Combined with Instapaper, I have feel like I have achieved the perfect reading workflow.

Bought it a few years ago... and I wouldn't recommend it. It was created in a pre-iPad/iPhone era and it's not comfortable to use from anywhere else than a PC.

Quicktime required for the demo video? Seriously? Sorry, I don't have quicktime installed on this computer, and the days of me installing local applications/plugins to watch video online are over.

I just Fever (<a href="http://www.feedafever.com/" rel="nofollow">http://www.feedafever.com/</a>). You host it yourself, and it does the job perfectly.

Nice to know that there's still at least one other Google Listen user in the world. I'm a huge podcast consumer, I like listening to old podcasts which have fallen off the RSS feed, and I still haven't found anything better.I honestly don't know what I'm going to do now. As far as I'm aware, nobody besides Google has been archiving RSS history for the past few years. It's a massive pain to dig for old podcast episodes any other way, as full feeds are extremely rare.

I used to use Google Listen, but at some point started using BeyondPod and recently - within the last couple of weeks - went to the paid version of BeyondPod.  It works great.

&#62; What do you guys recommend for replacement?That's the hard part. Reader integrates nicely with Android's Listen (podcast app), and the reader app, and there's plenty of standalone clients that sync with Google.That's my most-used Google app. By far. Colossal disappointment.

Netnewswire is great but now they should provide a new way to sync feeds and especially read/unread counts, flagged and unflagged items, and favorites instead of relying on GReader.If someone wants a pitch here: don't go for a reader, go for a simple WebDAV like system to keep feeds in sync cross-app with APIs so simple that every dev would include it in its feed reading app!

<a href="http://netnewswireapp.com" rel="nofollow">http://netnewswireapp.com</a> is wonderful for the Mac users out there that aren't tied to an HTML solution.Pretty sure you can sync with your Google Reader account and then delete it from the app, and it'll remember your subscriptions. Just deleted mine and it works fine.

<a href="http://www.protopage.com" rel="nofollow">http://www.protopage.com</a> has full screen mode with keyboard navigation if you first do Colors/Settings then untick "open news items directly" (Unticking this will mean headlines will open in the internal full text RSS news feed reader instead of navigating to the headline's web page directly).

I found bazqux.com which has the keyboard shortucts i wanted as well

IFTTT will let you easily do RSS to email too: ifttt.com/feed

"Low-tech"? Email is the best way to read RSS! Email has all the features of high-end RSS headers:<pre><code> * Remember your read messages, even across clients
 * Star and read for later
 * Cross-platform
 * Configurable archiving
 * Keyword filtering
 * Search past articles
 * Organize feeds into folders using configurable rules
 * Social! (Use the "forward" button.)
</code></pre>
What's not to like about email?

I'm surprised more people don't do this. It's pretty easy to set up.Here's a little bit I wrote about using rss2email + emacs. <a href="http://www.emacswiki.org/emacs/HOWTOReadFeedsInEmacsViaEmail" rel="nofollow">http://www.emacswiki.org/emacs/HOWTOReadFeedsInEmacsViaEmail</a>

Based on your must-have list, a good low-tech solution might be an RSS to email gateway.Then your mail client becomes your RSS client. Gmail has j/k key bindings, is relatively unadorned, and facilitates your skim / skip workflow. Excerpts might require some work, but perhaps you could coerce them into the subject line.Aaron Swartz wrote a nice RSS to email gateway btw: <a href="http://www.allthingsrss.com/rss2email/" rel="nofollow">http://www.allthingsrss.com/rss2email/</a>I have a crappier one that delivers directly into a Maildir, and I use it to read news in mutt: <a href="http://search.cpan.org/~acg/rssdrop-0.2/rssdrop" rel="nofollow">http://search.cpan.org/~acg/rssdrop-0.2/rssdrop</a>

&#62; That's the first Google service shutdown that I'm affected by.You never use Google Code Search RIP?

That's the first Google service shutdown that I'm affected by.Sad to see it go.What do you guys recommend for replacement? I know about NewsBlur [1], but I never liked it that much.I think I'm just looking for something that would emulate Reader's full-screen view as close as possible.[1] <a href="http://newsblur.com" rel="nofollow">http://newsblur.com</a>edit: Here's what I consider an absolute must-have in RSS app:- complete navigation with keyboard (j/k preferred)- full screen mode (really, I don't need a sidebar of a fixed header all the time)- feed view (not just list of items, show me excerpts!)And I know I may be the weird one, but I really, really dislike readers that try to show me items directly from feeds webpage. 
I find it jarring and distracting when I have five totally different layouts flash before my eyes within 10 seconds (I skim headlines and then skip most of items in my feed).And for the love of god, please, please, no goddamn 'WE LEARN WHAT YOU LIKE' or any kind of bullshit 'smart selection'. I selected my feeds myself, I can manage them just fine by myself, just get out of my way, please.

I'm really sad to see it go, it's the one service I use more than anything else. Probably more than email.

theoldreader seems to have died on my feed import to the best I can tell, anyone seen anything similar? It says it is still working in the background, but no update past the first 3 it imported...

theoldreader.com looks like a good alternative

Customized freetype for excessive eye bleeding.

No.But you should already have a google account since you used google reader I suppose.

can I register to theoldreader if I don't have a facebook/google account?

The Old Reader actually looks really good. If only it had an Android app...

Indeed - I stopped short for exactly the same reason.  Can't imagine why I'd want a reader app to mess with my contacts in any way.

I hate that too. When I get some free time, I'll create a new gmail account, import my Reader feeds to that, and sign in to theoldreader using the new gmail account. I suppose this will solve the problem, but it would be best if the good people at theoldreader fix it themselves.

That's where I stopped and shall not try it ever if they don't remove and no, I am not going to create a new a/c for that. I mean it's totally for spamming purposes - either to me or my contacts.By the way, interface looks cleaner, I wish so were the intentions :-)

Could be an oversight. I think "manage my contacts" is a default permission requested when not explicitely setting the scope in OAuth...

At least in Google Reader one can email articles, and it auto-suggests email addresses of your contacts. So Google Reader already has access to your Google Contacts.Perhaps The Old Reader just does the same?

They address some of the problems in their new blog post.<a href="http://blog.theoldreader.com/post/45337829605/unexpected-day-what-are-we-gonna-do-about-google#disqus_thread" rel="nofollow">http://blog.theoldreader.com/post/45337829605/unexpected-day...</a>

Well.. was going to sign in with my google account, but they seem to want "manage my contacts" permission.

So I added a feed to theoldreader, and it shows as last updated: 14 hours ago, even though there's been posts since then. Google Reader has already picked them up. The Old Reader sure lives up to its name of delivering me old news...Other alternatives I tried are also disappointing. July 1 will be a terrible day for the Internet.

<a href="https://www.google.com/takeout/#custom:reader" rel="nofollow">https://www.google.com/takeout/#custom:reader</a><a href="http://theoldreader.com/feeds/import" rel="nofollow">http://theoldreader.com/feeds/import</a>"Thank you for uploading your OPML file. We will soon start importing your subscriptions, which might take up to several hours depending on the amount of feeds you have.There are 22325 users in the import queue ahead of you."It may take some time indeed... I have 114 subscriptions and some of them can be dead now, as I haven't used GR for quite some time.

What the fuck.Later edit: Like many other will most likely do in their replies I'm also going to suggest an alternative that I've tried in the past.
<a href="http://theoldreader.com/" rel="nofollow">http://theoldreader.com/</a>Later edit 2: They even added a nice pop-up now. <a href="https://s3.amazonaws.com/i.imm.io/Zg6A.png" rel="nofollow">https://s3.amazonaws.com/i.imm.io/Zg6A.png</a>

Second that. Feedemon has been my default client for years. Totally upset with Google's doing here.

FeedDemon is dead: <a href="http://nick.typepad.com/blog/2013/03/the-end-of-feeddemon.html" rel="nofollow">http://nick.typepad.com/blog/2013/03/the-end-of-feeddemon.ht...</a>

Okay. So I need a replacement website that also has an Android app. And preferably a desktop app (or syncs with FeedDemon).Any suggestions?

I've been using this on and off for the past few months. Frankly, I prefer Google Reader to Fever, but I strongly prefer Fever to any of the other feed readers I've tried. I especially like that I can count on the server staying up and the service not shutting down.

I really like Fever. It imports and exports OPML, so it was easy move from NetNewsWire to Fever and back to other feed apps and backups. The Fever's mobile view works very nicely. Easy to install and it automatically updates itself.

I know Shaun has a great reputation, and I've played his games, but this is exactly how I feel.  Wish I could play with it a little bit before I press that "Buy" button.

I'd really love to be able to play with this before I drop $30 on it. It's not an unsubstantial amount of money to drop on a self-hosted webapp.

Unless you mean 'native app made by Fever', Reeder and Sunstroke [2] are good iOS apps with Fever support.[1] <a href="https://itunes.apple.com/ca/app/reeder/id325502379" rel="nofollow">https://itunes.apple.com/ca/app/reeder/id325502379</a>[2] <a href="https://itunes.apple.com/us/app/sunstroke/id488564806" rel="nofollow">https://itunes.apple.com/us/app/sunstroke/id488564806</a>

I use Fever full time. It's great, apart from the lack of native apps. That's the only thing that makes me resent it sometime. Their claims are true, too, it really does help cut back the noise and stops you reading the same story over and over. It's kind of nice to know that I own it, too, so nobody can just take it away.

Been running Fever exclusively for last 3 months when I heard whispers of Google Reader heading for the chopping block. I don't "get" the 'kindle/sparks/etc' lingo it uses, but as a basic Reader replacement AND self-hosted option, i love it. It has keyboard shortcuts and nearly all the other features you'd want.

I've used it every day for years... Anyone run an instance of <a href="http://www.feedafever.com" rel="nofollow">http://www.feedafever.com</a>? How is it?

+1 on first Google service shutdown that impacts me.  I use Reader daily.

Are they really shutting down the CalDAV interface to Google Calendar? (I'm not sure what the "API" bit means, or the "whitelisted".)As of now, CalDAV is Google's recommended way for syncing with iOS devices <a href="http://support.google.com/calendar/bin/answer.py?hl=en&#38;answer=151674" rel="nofollow">http://support.google.com/calendar/bin/answer.py?hl=en&#38;a...</a>

I'm glad I made the decision to host my own feed reader years ago. Mine's based on an old version of tt-rss, actually (I diverged from the codebase back in '05 when I felt like the author didn't really want any of my contributions).Edit: It looks like I'm also happy that I chose to host my own CalDAV server, too.Edit 2: @koenigdavidmj - Apparently I can't reply that deeply. DAViCal is the CalDAV server I'm using (<a href="http://www.davical.org/" rel="nofollow">http://www.davical.org/</a>). My wife and I sync our iPhones to it and it's been a godsend for my personal organization. (Now if I could just find a decent replacement for Mozilla Sunbird...)

There's tt-rss [1] if you want to host it yourself.[1] <a href="http://tt-rss.org/" rel="nofollow">http://tt-rss.org/</a>

This is looking like the best straight up switch out for reader. Imports are currently limited, and adding a sub takes a while. I'm sure it will settle down in a couple of days.Message when clicking "import":
Hey! Because of the huge load we started seeing from lots of concurrent feed import operations, we had to limit the number of imports active at any given time. It looks like right now there are no available slots left, so you might want to visit this page some time later. Meanwhile, feel free to subscribe to feeds manually.
Please accept our apologies for this inconvenience.

Jesus. Just got into the import queue...&#62; There are 41600 users in the import queue ahead of you.I bet they're happy right now.

Just imported my feeds into <a href="http://theoldreader.com" rel="nofollow">http://theoldreader.com</a> and it seems to work ok. Just keep in mind that importing takes a while - I saw only the first entry for a minute or two, then others started joining in.

Curse this decision - I use Google Reader every day.What is the best alternative RSS reader ??

I depend on Google Reader for keeping up with Hacker News. I'm going to be in a world of hurt now. I use iReadG on the iPhone to browse headings and then star the Hacker News posts I want to read later when I get back to the computer.iReadG has been great because it will download all the rss feed data and allow me to browser it and star items without an Internet connection which is great for those times on the road when there is no signal. I have no idea what I'll be able to use to replicate this functionality now that Google Reader is going down.Very very sad.

Does NewsBlur have something that resembles Reader's full-screen view? If not, is that anywhere on your roadmap?

You bet! It's OAuth-based import, so when you create your account it's just a click away. Couldn't be easier.EDIT: And OPML is the other option when you signup. It's an easy import process, since it's really quite important to get that part right.

It's taking like forever to import from reader.

Is there a way to import your google reader list into it?

It's a great day to be NewsBlur -- good luck with converting the new traffic!

I've been happy with FeedDemon Lite on the Windows desktop for ages. Sad to see I'm losing my sync with Google Reader, but at it'll still serve it's purpose.

What conesus is doing is very cool. But I'm still using NetNewsWire on OS X because it's a desktop RSS reader and it's good enough.Conesus: Have you considered running a Kickstarter for a desktop version of NewsBlur, in order to gauge interest? I'd definitely contribute.

I've been trying to remember what NewsBlur was called for the past 25 minutes. Thanks for posting this!That said, I lament the lack of a desktop app. I've been using Reeder for OS X, and I'd really like to have some sort of desktop app instead of relying on my iPhone or a website. Have you considered talking to existing app makers (e.g. Reeder) to see if they might want to switch over to using your service as their backend?

Good news for you then!I used to use GR every day, then on a whim I switched the free newsblur version. To be perfectly honest, it doesn't offer me a lot more than GR did, but after hitting the 60 feed limit a couple of times I've now gone paid and I'm happy to support a service that does exactly what I want it to do. It would have been nice if it imported by saved(or linked or started or whatever they were called in the end) stories from GR though.One peeve though, I have no idea how to manage my feeds. Is there any easy way to move them round through drag-and-drop? It appears I have to move them manually one by one, but I have a lot of feeds and I'd rather not do that!

" now would be a great time to start building it."Now is too late. The right time to have started building it was 2-6 months ago. Now is the time to market an existing solution.Citing the great gretzky quote, the "puck" is already here.

Its not as lucrative as you would think. When Google Code Search shut down I launched code search <a href="http://searchco.de" rel="nofollow">http://searchco.de</a> and while it got some attention it was nowhere near as much as you would expect.That said I do think that going after markets abandoned by the big guys is an excellent way to go. Usually they abandon it because its not a billion dollar business and isn't worth their time.I believe now that you need to start attacking their market-share before they close the product down and use the closure as a marketing opportunity.

Definitely interesting the trend that Google is following, first with iGoogle and now Reader.With backstitch (<a href="http://backstit.ch" rel="nofollow">http://backstit.ch</a>) we get questioned a lot why Google is no longer supporting these types of services (and if this means there is no opportunity there since they aren't worried about it anymore). We honestly feel like there is a lot of surface left uncovered when it comes to personalized/streamlined content and it just doesn't seem to be part of Google's refocusing (this has been seen with the shutting down of a lot of their lab projects as well).

Similarly, who are customers that are neglected by the big players?In my industry merchant accounts are very difficult to come by. We are considered high risk. Even with a year of processing records showing 1 chargeback out of &#62;3k transactions I can't get access to a merchant with decent rates(currently paying 3.7%). All the big players turn us away. There's gold to be mined off the beaten path.

It is often asked of startup founders 'what if Google starts doing what you do?', a valid question. Perhaps it is worth contemplating products too small for Google to concern themselves with, ones they might abandon, that would still be an attractive opportunity for the rest of us.I've been rooting for you and recall enjoying the blog posts about its making - I've always figured that "RSS is dead" and there is no longer money in clients (people used to pay for desktop readers!)..Except that Google would kill Reader eventually and somebody will soak that userbase of nerds right up. And NewsBlur is clearly the top choice and will hopefully occupy similar mindshare as Reader did for us until now. Congrats, well played. :)I wonder what the next one along these lines will be as now would be a great time to start building it.

Your website appears to be overloaded with traffic. You must be a happy man.

I've been using NewsBlur for a few weeks now (I met Sam a couple weekends ago) and I think it's fantastic. Highly recommended.

It's doubtful the average user wants to run their own server. I'm certainly capable of running my own, but it's more than worth the $24/yr not to.

It's open source and you get paid anyway?

Newsblur's Android app doesn't have a widget.

What is your Android widget like? The large Android widget ( i think it's 3x3?) is the only way I use Google Reader now, and I use it a lot. I hate that this is happening. Does your widget look like Reader's?

Thanks for making this, it is way better than Google Reader!

Does NewsBlur support authenticated ATOM feeds? Also, does it support 'deep' Craigslist queries?I tried to add this feed, for example:
<a href="http://denver.craigslist.org/search/cto?maxAsk=28000&#38;minAsk=14000&#38;query=535ix&#38;srchType=T&#38;format=rss" rel="nofollow">http://denver.craigslist.org/search/cto?maxAsk=28000&#38;min...</a>without success, but it could be your server getting hammered.

Thank you. I've tried newsblur, but I just hadn't had the impetus to switch until now.<pre><code> &#60;RSS&#62;"Rumors of my death are much exaggerated"&#60;/RSS&#62;</code></pre>

I started using NewsBlur about two months ago on a whim after using Google Reader for many years, and I really dig it.It was super simple to import my feeds from Google and I find that the navigation in NewsBlur lets me read/scroll through items (and ignore articles that aren't interesting) much faster than Google Reader.Anyone looking for a Google Reader substitute, definitely give NewsBlur a try!

Thanks for your work. I signed up in December, thinking I'd check it out, and ended up liking it so much that I made the switch from Reader the same day (premium too).I think that's a testament to how functional your app is. The iPhone app, while not up with Reeder (the iPhone app), is still very solid.I look forward to the redesign too. The beta site looks great!

We've also been working on a Google Reader replacement for the last two years: <a href="http://intigi.com" rel="nofollow">http://intigi.com</a>. With Intigi, you can import your RSS feeds from Reader (via OPML) and then filter the feeds by your preferred keywords and social signals (e.g., shares via Twitter).Intigi is a paid service, primarily targeted at marketers, but we do have a number of startups and founders using the product for content discovery and sharing. You can quickly share content you find to social media, a WordPress site, or to an RSS feed (e.g., to connect with IFTTT).I'm one of the cofounders and happy to answer any questions about the service and would love any feedback, if you decide to give it a test spin. Please email me at mjfern(at)intigi.com.

Wow, didn't consider this until your post. Losing Listen would be a big hit.Can anyone confirm that the Android Listen app will cease to function (i.e. refresh your existing feeds) once Google Reader is shut down? Am pretty sure that it relies solely on Google Reader's "Listen Subscriptions" tag for refreshing your podcast feeds, so that's definitely another gap that needs filling.

On the podcasting side, I began <a href="http://player.fm" rel="nofollow">http://player.fm</a> to manage podcasts in the cloud. Since then, Google has dropped support for its official Android app, Listen, and now Reader, which many people used for podcasts.It works from the browser, including mobile browsers, and native apps are coming. There's also an OPML importer, though currently experimental, and subscriptions can be consumed as OPML, RSS, etc.

I have to say, an rss reader that depends on numpy and scipy is pretty intriguing.

when i read about greader shutting down I instantly thought "good day for Samuel"

Out of curiosity: have you also seen a decline in users? I'm interested to know whether Google has seen a decline due to a general loss of interest in feed readers, or whether they are losing users to competitors, such as yours.

Hey - thought you might be interested in knowing there are lots of people at a total loss over on Reddit: <a href="http://www.reddit.com/r/technology/comments/1a8ygk/official_google_reader_blog_powering_down_google/" rel="nofollow">http://www.reddit.com/r/technology/comments/1a8ygk/official_...</a>Might be worth a post or two

I highly doubt that the performance bottleneck has anything to do with serving cacheable static files. When a user asks you which of their feeds have been updated in the last 60 seconds, that's not the kind of request you can just offload to a CDN.

Get it...<a href="http://www.cloudflare.com/plans" rel="nofollow">http://www.cloudflare.com/plans</a>

I just tried signing up but I received an error message.  Congrats on all the interest :)

Better get some more servers. newsblur.com and dev.newsblur.com are not responding.  "502 · NewsBlur is down"

It's fast and lightweight and uncluttered, which is great, but it lacks at least one bit of extremely critical functionality:I need, 100%, to see my content in forward-chronological order (most-recent-last).I've already given $24 for a year of NewsBlur, and I am super excited about being able to share and comment again. But, I know I'm not alone in wanting correct sorting.

Nice one.Just 1-2 things I miss:
- how can I mark an article read/unread?
- could I delete an entire folder?
- is there a limit on the number of feeds it can handle (I tried to import from reader, and I miss some feeds/folders)

NewsBlur is pretty good. I've used it for a while. I also write my own feed reader: Rssminer. It's not as full-fledged as NewsBlur, but is a much lighter alternative. It's support login with google and import google reader's subscription list.<a href="http://rssminer.net/demo" rel="nofollow">http://rssminer.net/demo</a>I hope HN finds it useful too. It's also fully open-source too: <a href="https://github.com/shenfeng" rel="nofollow">https://github.com/shenfeng</a>

For an alternative check out niflet.com. It adapts to your interests. It's written in Go, such that it can handle a ton of traffic on a cheap box.

Looks like it's not able to handle the load. Will check in some time.Nice app btw. The only good thing from GR closure might be that the dev community comes up with some real great alternatives. And yes, I hope paid ones.

If you like this layout you might also want to try out <a href="https://trackpanel.net" rel="nofollow">https://trackpanel.net</a>It lets you display RSS feeds (and bookmarks, tasks and notes) in a similar layout.(Also plugging a side project of mine :-))

<a href="http://skimfeed.com" rel="nofollow">http://skimfeed.com</a> - I don't like to share this out anymore because the server usually dies. But it's awesome.

Google can do (1) because they crawl the entire web constantly. That's not going to be a trivial feature to add for anyone else. (2) is also probably a side effect of crawling pretty much everything before you ask for it.

I too am looking for a reader with rss search.  This was the main reason I gave up whatever desktop app I was using at the time prior to Google Reader

Brilliant. I created an account. However, there are two very important features that Google reader has:(1) It lets you add subscriptions to regular websites without an RSS feed.(2) It lets you search for articles that were published before you subscribed to the feed.I think you could add (2) simply by redirecting to Google search using the site:sitename.com argument.(1) may not be that simple to add but it would be an incredibly important feature to have.

Happy NewsBlur customer here. I do recommend the service to anyone needing a Reader replacement.

When he realized that the traffic would be too much, and money would probably pour: <a href="https://twitter.com/NewsBlur/status/312025565815255040" rel="nofollow">https://twitter.com/NewsBlur/status/312025565815255040</a>

When did you lower the number of enabled feeds to 12?

i don't see windows phone listed on the web site.Is there a win8 version (win store, not desktop).tks

I am trying to register to NewsBlur but I encounter an error every single time after submitting the registration form. You should have a look at it as this is the perfect time to grab new users.

It was 64 before this news. The site regained some functionality when it went down to 12. I chose to go to Feedly instead, which was prepared for this news and works perfectly.

Found the commit, it was due to the load:<a href="https://github.com/samuelclay/NewsBlur/commit/f5ec4fa37d0a8172173b3fb43d305bb4a03816f9" rel="nofollow">https://github.com/samuelclay/NewsBlur/commit/f5ec4fa37d0a81...</a>Hopefully it will go back to 64 once things get under control.

How many sites can a free account follow? The front page copy says 64, but when I log in it says I can only turn on 12.

In what way is it slow? I've been using it for almost 2 years now, and have only seen slowness with particular feeds.

newsblur sucks totally, its interface is overloaded, it is slow. it only allows you a few feeds (unless you pay)

I'm sure this has been reported already but, after creating an account I see:"NewsBlur experienced an errorThe error has been logged and will be fixed soon so you won't have to see this message again."

The 'Import from Google Reader' option, while a great idea, a) it needs to be advertised better, and b) it doesn't seem work for me.

Very cool.  I'll definitely check NewsBlur out.  Hopefully it rocks so much that it makes me forget about Reader altogether.

Very cool, but where is the content in the demo coming from? The first thing I clicked on was some anti-Pope Francis screed. If it's a crowdsourced demo that's one thing, but probably not the friendliest thing to hand-pick.

Any (relatively easy) way to import all your feed from gReader?

I just tried it out, but so far the only thing I can say is that it is potentially good, but way, way too slow.

I don't use it every day, but I've paid for it since I first started using it a long time ago... Always want to support cool stuff when I can.Make sure there is an export feature, for some reason, I can't find it, and I'll be a daily user.

Well, I'm now a paid-up Newsblur subscriber ... couldn't find an easy way of giving feedback on the site so thought I'd use HN.The layout feels visually ... cluttered? ... but the functionality is excellent so I'm happy. Also the Google Reader import failed the first time, but succeeded the second.

This has been a long time coming. Four years ago I began work on my own feed reader, NewsBlur, and it's now a full-fledged Google Reader competitor. It's also a paid app and has been paying for itself nearly since the beginning.<a href="http://www.newsblur.com" rel="nofollow">http://www.newsblur.com</a>I hope HN finds NewsBlur useful, especially since it's got native mobile apps on iOS (iPhone+iPad), Android, Windows Phone, and Nokia MeeGo. Native story sharing was launched last Summer and I expect NewsBlur to be around for quite a while.It's also fully open-source, in case you decide to build your own private community: <a href="http://github.com/samuelclay" rel="nofollow">http://github.com/samuelclay</a>.I also have a full-scale re-design in the works, but if you can't get to the main site you can try using the beta site: <a href="http://dev.newsblur.com" rel="nofollow">http://dev.newsblur.com</a>

Newsblur had under 2,000 users in the last day.  So the usage of Google Reader isn't as significant as you think.

Weird decision. Judging by my logs, and those of several other sites I know about, it still has quite significant usage, though I don't know what their threshold is. For example, my own blog has 12x as many Google Reader subscribers as NewsBlur subscribers. Perhaps even with significant usage, that usage wasn't monetizable, and the what-people-read data wasn't valuable enough to keep it operating?Good news for the competition, anyway: Google Reader being pretty good yet completely free and not (obviously) monetized occupied a lot of that space, which is now freed up.edit: In fact, I see NewsBlur is completely unresponsive now, presumably due to sudden interest.

You can export your Google Reader data -- all your starred items are stored in a json file.

The petition will not help.Google already killed reader in their hearths when they made the g+ update. Instead of neglecting it for years to come they did the right thing and let it go for good.

Wondering this too.  I'd like to import my folders and starred items to another reader.  Anyone a reader that can do this?

This petition has 10x the number of signatures<a href="https://www.change.org/petitions/google-keep-google-reader-running" rel="nofollow">https://www.change.org/petitions/google-keep-google-reader-r...</a>

Still he best way to read content on the web, really sad to see it go.Adding on to this:What he hell do I do with my starred items now, it's literally the best collection of content I have curated in my life and I reference it all the time.edit: petition to keep it open <a href="http://www.change.org/petitions/google-please-don-t-kill-google-reader" rel="nofollow">http://www.change.org/petitions/google-please-don-t-kill-goo...</a>

If you're text only already, check out newsbeuter.

Say it ain't so. I use this everyday at work on my text only internet browser.This is the first internet product shutdown I've ever been affected by.Maybe I don't need to spend so much time reading up on random news. Who knows, it might be good for me.But I will miss you.

They should shut down Google search as well while there at it, and redirect it to Google+.

But the thing is that Google+ is wholly different experience. It's not about quickly consuming large amounts of information.

How are you supposed to use RSS with G+? Wouldn't that be a mess?

It's also about driving writers to Google+.

&#62; Why are they shutting it down?Because they would rather that you use Google+. The writing was on the wall when they started disabling features a year or two ago.

Why are they shutting it down? I mean heaps of people must still use it. I bet a shit load of people use for Google Alerts as well, lots of businesses.Far if it costed too much, i bet people would be happy to fork out $10 a year for it?I've been using it daily for the past 4 years, to be honest nothing comes that close to it, and most likely the majority of people who use RSS readers use Google Reader.Also now most of the iOS/Android apps are fucked now since they all use Google Reader.Tldr; Google are dongies.

You can easily monetize RSS, you can get some of the best information about a person about the content they consistently subscribe to. All their targeted advertising would have been all the better targeted at people if they intelligently used their subscription information.

I would be willing to pay. I wish they'd tried to gauge user willingness to pay even as an experiment.

I guess they couldn't monetize RSS.  I would have taken an ad-supported version.  Nobody would probably click the ads though.

Damn. Reader was very useful for keeping up with academic journals and flagging articles for further consideration.

Sample size of one, but Google Reader accounted for 6,168 of my 7,698 RSS subscribers yesterday (according to the probably-also-on-the-chopping-block FeedBurner).

Is it the biggest though? I get the impression many people use a desktop app for RSS feeds (I certainly do).Would be interesting to see a marketshare breakdown.

None that I know of. But the question remains is whether websites will want to provide a syndication mechanism similar to RSS. Google apparently thinks that it isn't worth maintaining and they are just the ones aggregating the feeds. RSS feeds won't die and will definitely be used in various niches such as podcasting. But if RSS feeds are losing popularity as Google claims, I am worried about their future. Combined with the fact they are probably harder to monetize, I would not be surprised if their days are numbered on most common websites. And that sucks, cause RSS readers always felt like using a cheat code on the internet and I don't find anything that replaces it to my satisfaction.

What other syndication mechanism works, is cross platform, portable, provides rich media, and is open?

Bummer. I imagine there will be a few decent alternatives, but if the biggest game in RSS reader town is shutting down, how long will websites continue to provide and expose RSS feeds to the public?

use it daily. Would be nice if Google released details on this "decline in usage"

Since IFTTT can consume any RSS feed, you can just use any client that lets you export your starred articles as one, such as Tiny Tiny RSS.I have a similar use case, where I want to automatically download chosen podcasts. I just created a "download" label, got an RSS feed link from my client and put it on a podcasting app. Now I just need to label the episodes I want to listen to on Tiny and they'll be automatically downloaded to my phone.

This is going to be a huge pain for me. There was a decent infrastructure built on top of google reader (not only apps that let you log in and view your feeds on different devices). I constantly use ifttt to send starred articles to my evernote.

True, but that's not too bad.The real pain comes when your email address is no longer valid. You have to hunt down everyone you've ever communicated with to give them a new one. A lot of older, and more casual, contacts will be unable to reach you.

Is there software that connects over IMAP and archives all your mail into one file? Not an email client.

You can get all your Gmail data over standard IMAP.  If you don't take advantage that to make personal backups, you are a fool.

&#62; What would stop Google from killing your gmail or docs when they don't see it as valuable anymore?Unfortunately, nothing. However Google makes it really easy to export this data.

<a href="http://www.google.com/takeout" rel="nofollow">http://www.google.com/takeout</a>

I have been thinking about this for sometime now and think there is a startup idea there. If someone can promise to give you a email address on their domain, but with the caveat that it will never be revoked come what may, I think lot of people will be willing to use the mail. Bonus, if company promises to hand over the data/email address to your descendants after your death.Of course, somehow, spam needs to be tackled.

You can't just let products sit around and fester. Even if you're not building new features, you have to support browser updates and patch security holes, and the latter in particular means you have to keep around folks familiar with the details of the entire stack. As services age and folks move on to new jobs, that gets increasingly expensive to maintain as you have to train new maintainers.

I wasn't much of a Google Reader user, but it certainly does feel like this retirement might undermine some of their "trust the cloud" efforts. In the old days products getting killed only meant that no more updates are coming.

These web companies prove over and over again that it's not possible to trust them with your data. What would stop Google from killing your gmail or docs when they don't see it as valuable anymore?The worst part is how the big guys kill all competition with their free products leaving few alternatives for users.

I think at that point, content creators being aggregated by Google--who are already have a fairly stressful relationship with Google--might accumulate too much ammunition to use against them (as then Google would be directly profiting from aggregating and redistributing content from third-parties in a modified presentation).

If it was an issue of ad views all they'd have to do is add an ad bar at the top ala gmail.

If that was a problem, they should've offered paid subscriptions.Yeah, but they don't want us as customers, they want to sell us as Soylent Green out the back door.With this news, the only remaining things I'll use Google for are search, GMail, and some libraries like Guice &#38; Guava.

If that was a problem, they should've offered paid subscriptions. I refuse to see ads, but I'll happily pay for the privilege.I find the Google Reader web interface to be dreadful and ugly, so I never go there except to manage my RSS feeds. Third party devs have created newsreader apps so much better than Google did, it's not even funny.

Indeed. I regularly use it via the Press app on Android, and visit the actual site only to manage the subscriptions.The service itself at that level is comparatively straightforward. Hopefully someone (twentyfivesquares?) will step up and offer a replacement. I'd be willing to pay.

I have plenty of feeds that include ads. Reader shows all images and links that are part of the feed body so not going to the site should not be a problem.If an ad supported feed provider fails to add ads to their feed they just do not understand the medium. One of the core ideas in RSS is to avoid visiting all the subscribed sites!

They still get a lot of data exhaust.They could compete with a solid mobile app / desktop app and monetize that. Lots of ways to leverage it against Facebook and Twitter and LinkedIn. All those services are building freaking news aggregators, and Google is killing theirs which is maybe the best and most useful?It seems really lame and evil.

I'll take the blame for this.I use Google Reader heavily, but I never go to the web pages. I have native apps on my desktop and mobile devices and just use Reader to keep my subscriptions synced.No ad views, no service.

My impression is that the internet's elite click almost no ads, so Google as a profit-seeking entity doesn't necessarily care too much about what they do or think in aggregate, as long as they don't get upset enough to be heard by people who actually make up their revenue streams.

These seems to be the most short sighted bit - they had the techarati 1% visiting a Google social media property multiple times a day and yet they neutered it (rather than integrating properly) to work more on Google+.

I'd love that kind of comparison that also includes if there is any desktop (linux hopefully) app support too.  I've been using google reader and liferea to keep my rss feeds synced between devices and to avoid re-reading things i already saw.

I've been an active, daily user of Google Reader since the beginning. I knew this was coming, but it still doesn't feel right because unlike other Google properties that I don't use, it's part of my information flow.What I'd really like to see here on HN is a post comparing other RSS contenders like NewsBlur and The Old Reader.

Sergey Brin is a scurge for old Google fans.... this guy seems to focus on hardware related products more than what Google great.... its Web products

I believe the "loyal userbase" would be large enough to sustain a startup. But sadly that is not enough for google anymore.

You can get an RSS file (well, Atom) for any feed that includes all posts going back to whenever google reader started following it.  Normally if you get the RSS from the originating site it'll only have the latest 20 or so posts, and there isn't a standardized way to get the history.

Greader will preserve its own history of a feed, including deleted items and feeds that go down, given someone on the Internet was accessing it, Google caches it.It means when a website is taken offline, if you are subscribed to, say, a content RSS feed through them, you can still browse the history and content.I just switched to Akregator, which will locally cache feeds (and you can configure it to do so permanantly) but it is a local copy. You can host your feeds via a feed host through it, so I imagine what I'm going to do is run Akregator off my server box, archive my feeds, and access it from my servers ip.

Are there any alternative sources of archival RSS feeds like those that Google Reader (unofficially) provides?

You can export most of your data (and certainly the list of feeds you follow) <a href="http://www.dataliberation.org/google/reader" rel="nofollow">http://www.dataliberation.org/google/reader</a>

Uh oh. Not good for someone with over a thousand RSS feeds from various updates-once-a-year products or sites.

NOOOOO!It is my most accessed browser URL.It is the primary method I peruse new stuff on the web.It is the only RSS app that can handle my volume of RSS subscriptions (all others choke and sputter once the feed total is greater than a couple hundred).

Netvibes is another alternative (it has a widget and reader view).

You know what you call a product you don't put much effort into for some time and which is still in daily use by happy users?Working./mutter.

I for one welcome this change as an opportunity for growth. Google has not put any effort into reader for some time now. Maybe some innovative company will get the google reader user base and build something great.---OTOH I do feel sad that reader is gone as it has been a part of my daily life for many years now. Some say that RSS is dead but I cannot find any alternative to feeds I've collected.

Agreed on most points. And to be honest, if you're a real customer of Google (we use them for our business) you are treated worse than the "free service" (where you aren't the customer, you're the product). Our work accounts have a fraction of the functionality of our free accounts and the idea that this is somehow doing us a favor ("we only give you the very most stable of our services") is rather unconvincing.

You really should get off Gmail. At the very least, use a domain and google apps for your domain, to keep the option of fleeing later.Even for search, there are really only a few companies crawling now -- Google, Bing/MS, and Blekko. I'm going to try Bing for a month (I tried in the past, and it wasn't great, but was close) and Blekko for another month, but I'm pretty sure I don't care about any other Google services.

&#62; it starts with people like me who got to ask themselves honestly "why do I keep relying on these guys?".Boy, you really summed up my own personal feelings on this. I'm beginning to rethink my own Gmail usage now.

Google is one of those companies that make me feel like a wuss for being their customer. Okay, in this case one could (convincingly) argue that advertisers are the real customers of Google Reader, but I would have gladly just paid for the service. Apple is another such company for me, and I dumped considerable amounts of money into them, and they similarly just let me know with every single action that I'm not their kind of customer.So the question becomes not "why is everyone using them?" or even "why are they doing things like this?", it starts with people like me who got to ask themselves honestly "why do I keep relying on these guys?".Gmail is my main email account and it makes me deeply uncomfortable. I love OS X, despite its ever-increasing flaws, and that makes me feel like a hostage experiencing Stockholm syndrome. Facebook is the only thing in this category I actually stopped caring about on my own, but if I'm being honest that's more my friends' fault for re-enacting soap opera scripts online and offline, and less because Facebook is a data-grabbing virus that screws its users over at every turn (which it is).My only face-saving answer to that conundrum is those products offer me some things that others don't, they have features that large companies are better positioned to deliver on. However, that's not a permanent state of things, as the complex features of yesterday become increasingly more feasible for smaller developers to tackle tomorrow. Maybe it's a good thing that Google and others are finally straight-up bent on filtering nerds like me out of their customer base, maybe that's the kick needed to overcome inertia and complacency.

While it doesn't cost Google much to keep Google Reader going, it does sacrifice ad revenue that would be gained if people visited the website(s).I know there is an ad service for the feeds but as far as I am aware they aren't very profitable.

Are you sure the shutdown is to foster an illusion?Maybe there simply isn't a good upside to keep this service going and its a business decision?

Pretty irritated at the way Google takes moderately successful services that can't possibly cost them all that much to keep running and puts them down the memory hole, to foster the happy illusion that everything that everything that Google does turns to gold.I'm sure there's more engagement with Reader than Plus, with its millions of users who don't really use it (many of whom aren't even really aware that they are signed up for it).

I spend more actual time in Reader than any other Google application including Gmail. This bites.I'm open to alternatives, but I haven't seen any I could really latch on to.

Feedly has a very familiar view for Reader users: <a href="http://blog.feedly.com/2013/03/14/tips-for-google-reader-users-migrating-to-feedly/" rel="nofollow">http://blog.feedly.com/2013/03/14/tips-for-google-reader-use...</a>I've been using that view since the Reader announcement prompted me to give Feedly a second look. Works perfectly.

Sadly most of the services fill a different niche. Feedly and so on are all magazines but not what I consider real RSS readers. I've read though this Thread, the Reddit threads and through some "Reader Alternatives" articles. The only things similar seem to be The Old Reader and Newsblur.

While I am an avid Google Reader user, I think this is good news. Their product has stagnated over the past few years, yet few competitors emerged. Hopefully this creates a void that a better service or set of services can fill.

It's true, Fever is an Account type for Reeder.<a href="http://shawnblanc.net/2012/06/review-reeder-3-for-iphone/" rel="nofollow">http://shawnblanc.net/2012/06/review-reeder-3-for-iphone/</a>

Reeder on the iPhone syncs with Fever, but neither the Mac nor iPad versions of Reeder do.Sunstroke (<a href="https://goneeast.com/sunstroke/" rel="nofollow">https://goneeast.com/sunstroke/</a>) is a better Fever-specific client for the iPhone, I think... but it doesn't have either an iPad or a Mac version. On the Mac you can use Fever's web interface but on the iPad you're pretty much out of luck, as there are no native clients and trying to use the web interface there is crazy-making. (Actually, the web interface is a little crazy-making in any web browser. It's just a lot crazy-making on the iPad.)

I'm looking at FaF but not seeing how this works with Reeder?

I'm considering buying Feedafever as well only because of Reeder integration. I think this just shows that any service can and most likely will just shut down, and we have to be ready to move to the next best alternative. Reeder is a great app and I enjoy using it because it's elegant. I recommend it and after seeing Newsblur mentioned here I wonder if Reeder can integrate with Newsblur (Newsblur is down so I'm assuming it doesn't already have a good mobile interface).

Per the @reederapp Twitter feed, "Dont worry, Reeder wont die with Google Reader."<a href="http://twitter.com/reederapp/status/311995748482945025" rel="nofollow">http://twitter.com/reederapp/status/311995748482945025</a>

I'm very disappointed by this. I use Reader to manage all my RSS feeds. I check Reeder on my phone more than I use any other app.It just goes to show, if you're using Google software that has no advertising and isn't used to sell advertising, it could end any day, and it probably will some day.I'll be purchasing a Feedafever license, which also happens to work with Reeder. <a href="http://www.feedafever.com/" rel="nofollow">http://www.feedafever.com/</a>

Yeah, I'm far more worried about the fact that pretty much all the iOS rss readers use Google Reader as a backend.I'm going to be fubar for keeping different apps across devices all in sync...

There is a whole app ecosystem built around Google Reader. This is going to be ugly.I actually it daily but only through apps like Reeder.

Google Reader shutting down