Google Reader.
Google · Chris Wetherell · Technology
The RSS reader a generation of the web ran on, closed while still beloved and still used.
—
Figures undisclosed
7 yrs 9 mo
2005–2013
Internal Cannibalization
Eaten by another product in the same house
Killed while still loved.
TLDR
Google Reader was, for roughly eight years, the quiet backbone of how a certain kind of person read the internet: an RSS aggregator with sharing, notes, and a keyboard-driven interface that rewarded heavy use.
Google shut it down on July 1, 2013, citing declining usage. Insiders and observers pointed elsewhere: Reader's social features were folded into Google+, the company's strategic bet of the era, and a product with a small but intensely loyal audience did not survive the reorganisation around that bet.
The petition to save it collected well over a hundred thousand signatures. Reader's death is still cited as the moment RSS moved from mainstream infrastructure to enthusiast hobby — and as a case study in what happens when a product is measured only against the company's current strategy.
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