Google Killing Google Reader & Google Voice for BlackBerry Client

Pissed Off

Google just pissed off a whole slew of reporters, journalists, bloggers, and many other Google Reader users out there. Google Reader became the gold standard for RSS readers with Google pioneering the space a few years back. It is one of the only Google services I would actually pay a subscription for. In the past year or two they started treating it like the black sheep as social networking took off. In February we got a taste of what would happen when Google Reader went wonky for almost two days. Now it Google has announced that they plan on completely killing off the service on July 1, 2013. Here is what Google has to say about it:

We launched Google Reader in 2005 in an effort to make it easy for people to discover and keep tabs on their favorite websites. While the product has a loyal following, over the years usage has declined. So, on July 1, 2013, we will retire Google Reader. Users and developers interested in RSS alternatives can export their data, including their subscriptions, with Google Takeout over the course of the next four months.

All I can say is B@$+@RD$!!! To add insult to injury they are also killing off the Google Voice App for BlackBerry for BlackBerry Legacy devices. They are recommending users go to their HTML5 web app which works on OS 6.0+.

My mind is still reeling from all of the apps I use daily that will stop working when Google Reader goes dark. I really hope Google releases the source code or something because there really is no alternative right now. On top of that there are so many apps that utilize the Google Reader API to sync between devices.

This is a sad day… Maybe there is some hope Google will change their mind.

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