Last week Google announced the demise of Google Reader and it will pull the curtain on it by 1st July 2013. According to Google, not many people are using the services of Google Reader which is a prime reason for this decision.
What?
I know this is the reaction from many of us, is it true? One of the user decided to give it a try and he raised a petition on change.org to keep the Google Reader running. That petition has already cross the 100,000 signature in less then a week, which tells how many users are using it.
Anyhow now there are bigger task to find an alternative for Google Reader, there are many RSS feed aggregator available but none compares to Google Reader Services.
It is not only RSS aggregator, its also a cloud based tool which organize your content in folder structure and many people use web based reader or apps on mobile devices to read the content. You can subscribe to the feeds and filter them according to your need. So finding an alternative is really hard.
The other good feature was providing an access through an api, which has been used by many apps. Those apps has created a beautiful presentation of the content accumulated in Google Reader.
There are only few RSS feed aggregator which come close to it and has shown some promise. Here are two of them:
1. Feedly
Feedly is a content organizer which takes content from Google Reader and put them in really nice layout. It is one of the popular app on mobile devices and they have announced that they are already working on replacement api.
They have said that they will provide similar kind of services which we will see once it will go live but they have promised a seamless transition. If you are using feedly than all of your feeds will be transferred to their services without you doing anything.
It is already a very popular app and if they will be able to create that api, it will be a great replacement for Google Reader. Already more than 500000 users has shifted from Google Reader to Feedly.
2. Google Currents
Google Currents is not a direct replacement at this point of time as it does not offer many web based option but its a good replacement if you read most of your content from mobile devices.
It does provide an option to subscribe to the feed and will give all the latest news and topics along with the subscribed feeds. This can be one of the reason of demise of Google Reader. Why offer two tools to provide similar option?
Also with the push towards android and a common set of service, Google might add this to play store as an option and provide an single source for all the information.
Currently it does not give facility to select unread article and some other options but it is growing at a good pace.
There are also some indication that Google Play Store will start a newspaper section along with Magazine and Google Currents will also be merged with all the other contents in Play Store. If that is true, it might be the reason for this decision.
Any how Google Currents gives blog publishers full control on how they want to show their blog. You can publish your blog on Google Currents and change the layout according to your need. So if you are a webmaster, you should consider adding your blog to Google Currents.
For the user, there is no such restrictions. They can search almost any feed and add it to they account. It will start showing in their apps, it is live feed rather that the web based stored articles like Google Reader.
So do you have any other Google Reader replacement in mind?
Great post , the best thing is you have just provided only two alternatives. So I dont have to try much to find the best alternative ,thanks
Thanks Abhishek, There are not many apps which can compete with Google Reader at this point of time…hope you will like these two options…..
Oh no, is this true? I can’t think of a better replacement, or something that would even be at par with Google reader. I hope Google itself can come up with a replacement. Til then, I would hate to bid farewell to Google reader.
Ya, I know that there is nothing which provides similar functionality but Google Currents comes very close to it….Check it out…
Great post! This really helps others.
Both are not minimalistic. I like the old reader app. It comes closer to GR.
Hey, which old reader app you are talking….I would love to take a look at it..
Thanks for sharing the comparison and descriptive information about these alternatives, Sanjeev. I have read so much about Feedly now I guess I will eventually switch to it.
I have moved to both of them right now and will finalize once Google Reader will no more there….might give a good idea about the services…
It’s bad to hear that Google Reader is shutting down. I have heard about Feedly, I guess it is one of the enticing tool to work with. I am going to use feedly from now on. Thanks for sharing this post and giving information about the other tool.
Feedly is a good alternative and they have already announced that they are working on the similar api… so hopefully transition will be easy…
We are all surprised by the news about Google Reader shutting down. Great thing that there is still news reading apps and services out there that we can use as an alternative.
Yes, there are few but none provides a the flexibility like Google Reader….Hope the services will improve and we will have a good replacement.
Feebly is good, but check out Zite which is available for the IPad. Magazine style layout for your favorite subjects.
Yes, it is a good tool but certainly not a replacement for Google Reader..It does connect account but gives the results from all web spaces…I was more looking for a tool where you can aggregate RSS feeds once Google api is down…
I have the exact same issue indeed. Liferea Feed Reader seams to be a good alternative but I’ll also give another try to Yarssr. Both are in the ubuntu software center.
Hi Sandeep, There are many alternatives but the above mentioned two alternatives can be accessed from all kind of platforms and should provide almost same kind of flexibility.
Comments are closed.