#google-reader — Public Fediverse posts

It's been 13 years ~~

https://techcrunch.com/2013/07/06/google-reader-is-gone-but-why-is-everybody-building-their-own/

#RSS #GoogleReader #Google #oldschoolcool #legacy

Our blog at @censys now has a proper RSS feed https://censys.com/feed/
(cc: @Feedly #GoogleReader)

After 13 years of it being gone, my fingers still want to type "reader" when I open a new browser tab without a clear destination in mind.

#GoogleReader

2006, in my Mac era.

When Apple made adequate hardware and good software.

P-p-p-p-powerbook!

#RetroComputing #Memories #Mac #Powerbook #Apple #GoogleReader #IRC #HomeOffice

@Catwoman69y2k I've concluded that much of the "join xyz platform for updates" mentality comes from the one-two punch of both web browsers ditching RSS and Atom and Google ditching Google Reader.

Say a free software project maintainer writes a development blog. The audience may or may not already have an RSS reader installed. This means the project maintainer might feel responsible for recommending a reader application for all 7 major platforms (Windows, macOS, desktop Linux, iOS, Android, Chrome extension, Firefox extension). Otherwise, people will land on https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Comparison_of_feed_aggregators and experience analysis paralysis.

I guess one disadvantage of protocols is that platforms have tended to do better at landing pages than protocols. Is there a page to which a blogger can refer visitors who have never used RSS before?

#RSS #DevBlog #RSSReader #AnalysisParalysis #GoogleReader #Atom #FOSS #ProtocolsNotPlatforms #LandingPage

Habe in den letzten Tagen 4 super coole #OpenSource #FOSS Tools installiert und genutzt (PHP, teilweise MySQL):

* #FreshRSS als eigenen kleinen RSS Reader (so in etwa wie #GoogleReader, falls den noch jemand kennt)

* #YOURLS zum Links-Verkürzen (so in etwa wie bit.ly)

* #PrivateBin zum (einmaligen) Teilen von Zugangsdaten o.Ä. als Alternative zu onetimesecret.com (was aus der EU kommt, glaube ich)

* #ShareX fürs Teilen von #Screenshots

Bin begeistert! Weitere Tipps?

Hey Mastodon, I am one of those who miss #GoogleReader and am sad about the decline of #RSS feeds. It would be so cool if there were more of them. Particularly for #neurodivergent people with #ADHD.

Is there an #NGO or organization or even some informal group or working to get more and better RSS feeds and to make them more of a thing? #FOSS #truth #accessibility

En el futuro se preguntarán cómo #Google pasó de su lema #DontBeEvil a ser abiertamente malvada. Yo tengo clara la fecha y fue en 2013 cuando anunciaron el cierre de #GoogleReader. Ni olvido ni perdón.

#Ideas running through my mind…

Rename the #DarkWeb to #TheAltWeb

Creating Alt Web Services/Infrastructure

#AltReader
An .onion/.i2p website which functions as #GoogleReader (only for .onion/.i2p/.alt links to RSS/ATOM feeds)

#AltSocialLinker
An .onion/.i2p website which functions as #DelIcioUs (#LinkHut) but only accepts .onion/.i2p/.alt links

#RFC9476 #PrivateSecureWeb
#Tor #Onion #I2P

#OnGoing

The Small God of the Internet

It was a small announcement on an innocuous page about “spring cleaning”. The herald, some guy with the kind of name that promised he was all yours. Four sentences you only find because you were already looking for a shortcuts through life. A paragraph, tidy as a folded handkerchief, explained that a certain popular reader of feeds was retiring in four months’ time. Somewhere in the draughty back alleys of the web, a small god cleared his throat. Once he had roared every morning in a thousand offices. Now, when people clicked for their daily liturgy, the sound he made was… domesticated.

He is called ArrEsEs by those who enjoy syllables. He wears a round orange halo with three neat ripples in it. Strictly speaking, this is an icon1, but gods are not strict about these things. He presides over the River of Posts, which is less picturesque than it sounds and runs through everyone’s house at once. His priests are librarians and tinkerers and persons who believe in putting things in order so they can be pleasantly disordered later. The temple benches are arranged in feeds. The chief sacrament is “Mark All As Read,” which is the kind of absolution that leaves you lighter and vaguely suspicious you’ve got away with something.

There was a time the great city-temples kept a candle lit for him right on their threshold. The Fox of Fire invited him in and called it Live Bookmarks.2 The moldable church, once a suit, then a car, then a journey, in typical style stamped “RSS” beside the address like a house number. The Explorer adopted the little orange beacon with the enthusiasm of someone who has been told there will be cake. The Singers built him a pew and handed out hymnals. You could walk into almost any shrine and find his votive lamp glowing: “The river comes this way.” Later, accountants, the men behind the man who was yours, discovered that candles are unmonetizable and, one by one, the lamps were tidied into drawers that say “More…”.

ArrEsEs has lineage. Long before he knocked on doors with a bundle of headlines, there was Old Mother Press, the iron-fingered goddess of moveable type, patron of ink that bites and paper that complains. Her creed was simple: get the word out. She marched letters into columns and columns into broadsides until villages woke up arguing the same argument.3* ArrEsEs is her great-grandchild—quick-footed, soft-spoken—who learned to carry the broadsheet to each door at once and wait politely on the mat. He still bears her family look: text in tidy rows, dates that mind their place, headlines that know how to stand up straight.**

Four months after the Announcement, the big temple shut its doors with a soft click. The congregation wandered off in small, stubborn knots and started chapels in back rooms with unhelpful names like OGRP4. ArrEsEs took to traveling again, coat collar up, suitcase full of headlines, knocking on back doors at respectable intervals. “No hurry,” he would say, leaving the bundle on the step. “When you’re ready.” The larger gods of the Square ring bells until you come out in your slippers; this one waits with the patience of bread.

Like all small gods, he thrives on little rites. He smiles when you put his name plainly on your door: a link that says feed without a blush. He approves of bogrolls blogrolls, because they are how villages point at one another and remember they are villages. He warms to OPML, which is a pilgrim’s list people swap like seed packets. He’s indulgent about the details—/rss.xml, /atom.xml, /feed, he will answer to all of them—but he purrs (quietly; dignified creature) for a cleanly formed offering and a sensible update cadence5.

His miracles are modest and cannot be tallied on a quarterly slide. He brings things in the order they happened. He does silence properly. The river arrives in the morning with twenty-seven items; you read two, save three, and let the rest drift by with the calm certainty that rivers do not take offense. He remembers what you finished. He promises tomorrow will come with its own bundle, and if you happen to be away, he will keep the stack neat and not wedge a “You Might Also Like” leaflet between your socks.

These days, though, ArrEsEs is lean at the ribs. The big estates threw dams across his tributaries and called them platforms. Good water disappeared behind walls; the rest was coaxed into ornamental channels that loop the palace and reflect only the palace. Where streams once argued cheerfully, they now mutter through sluices and churn a Gloomwheel that turns and turns without making flour—an endless thumb-crank that insists there is more, and worse, if you’ll just keep scrolling. He can drink from it, but it leaves a taste of tin and yesterday’s news.

A god’s displeasure tells you more than his blessings. His is mild. If you hide the feed, he grows thin around the edges. If you build a house that is only a façade until seven JSters haul in the furniture, he coughs and brings you only the headline and a smell of varnish6. If you replace paragraphs with an endless corridor, he develops the kind of seasickness that keeps old sailors ashore. He does not smite. He sulks, which is worse, because you may not notice until you wonder where everyone went.

Still, belief has a way of pooling in low places. In the quiet hours, the little chapels hum: home pages with kettles on, personal sites that remember how to wave, gardeners who publish their lists of other gardeners. Somewhere, a reader you’ve never met presses a small, homely button that says subscribe. The god straightens, just a touch. He is gentler than his grandmother who rattled windows with every edition, but the family gift endures. If you invite him, tomorrow he will be there, on your step, with a bundle of fresh pages and a polite cough. You can let him in, or make tea first. He’ll wait. He always has.

Heavily edited sloptraption.

1. He maintains it’s saffron, which is what halos say when they are trying to be practical ↩︎
2. The sort of feature named by a librarian, which is to say, both accurate and doomed. ↩︎
3. Not to be confused with the software that borrowed her title and a fair chunk of her patience. ↩︎
4. Old Google Reader People ↩︎
5. On festival days he will accept serif, sans-serif, or whatever the village printer has not yet thrown at a cat.
   ↩︎
6. He can drink JSON when pressed; stew remains his preference. ↩︎

#AI #algorithmicFeeds #blogging #blogrolls #Discworld #doomscrolling #feedReaders #GoogleReader #history #IndieWeb #internetFolklore #openWeb #OPML #personalWebsites #philosophy #POSSE #printingPress #quietWeb #RSS #smallGods #TerryPratchett #webStandards #writing

18 years ago "RSS in Plain English " When Google Reader was still a thing

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0klgLsSxGsU

#rss #feed #atom #googlereader

For those of you who ever have to tell the tale of woe that was Google Reader being axed, let this cartoon guide your way.

(And nice to see ChatGPT still merrily hallucinating with the girl whose head is doing a full Exorcist turn.)

#rss #GoogleReader #InternetTalesAndLegends #InternetHistory

Wondering where to take refuge now — go back to #Instapaper or try out #Matter and #ReadwiseReader? 🤔

Any other suggestions for apps that work across #iOS and desktop?

Ugh! This is like #Zite and #GoogleReader all over again. 😰

@operationpuppet I have to say, I'm a lot more passionate about the Internet and how it's used these days. I love the vibe here on the #fediverse and it's also helped me discover #blogs that I'm reading with #RSS like I haven't since Google reader bit the dust.

#GoogleReader

Feedly (remember Google Reader?) now allows following Bluesky accounts and feeds:
https://feedly.com/new-features/posts/bluesky

So still get your RSS news, and more…

#Feedly #GoogleReader #bluesky

5/ Et du coup, bah j'ai commencé à utiliser des outils en ligne qui se présentaient comme des alternatives au défunt #GoogleReader, et bientôt comme des alternatives au #GoogleNews proposé (imposé ?) sur tous les smartphones et autres tablettes #Android.

Je me souviens avoir longtemps utilisé #Feedly... Et j'étais bien content d'avoir à nouveau un endroit pour accéder rapidement aux infos qui m'intéressaient, sans écran pub et sans ces masses d'avis et d'engueulades devenus la norme.

1/ Ma quête vers les outils parfaits de fil d'actualités via la techno #RSS, suite (et fin ?)

Il y a longtemps, j'utilisais #GoogleReader pour suivre les actualités sur mes sites préférés, classés en grandes thématiques. Et puis les réseaux sociaux sont arrivés, les comptes de mes sites préférés ont ouvert sur #Facebook puis sur #Twitter et ensuite #Instagram, etc.

Du coup, l'accès à "l'info", au sens large, s'est retrouvé placé au beau milieu de ces arènes numériques...

#RSS :rss: って、配信側は極論 #RSS #Feed ファイルを特定の URL に置いておいて、それを更新すればいいだけだし、受信側は #RSSReader #FeedReader みたいなアプリやサービスがあれば、それだけで継続的な情報のサブスクリプションが可能っていう面が、ゲートキーパー的なビジネスから見ると結構邪魔な存在なのかもなぁ :tony_neutral:

#Google も当初は #GoogleReader ツールの提供を通して、ユーザーの #RSS 利用に存在感を維持しながら可能性を模索してたのかもしれないけど、あるときから #RSS の扱いがどんどん小さくなって、最終的には「なるべくユーザーに :rss を意識させない方向になっていった感がある。

その「あるとき」はブログ文化が #Twitter とか #SNS サービスに移っていった時期とも重なってる気がするから、ユーザー側でも #RSS 離れみたいなものはあったとは思うので #Google が #RSS を殺した、というのはさすがに言いすぎな気もする。

#RSS から #SNS へユーザーの興味が移行していった当時、だれかのただの「つぶやき」みたいな投稿ももちろん多かったけど、特定のページの URL とともに「一言を添えたリンク紹介」みたいな投稿も多くて、テレビや Web 上のネタなどに反応する「にぎやかな観客席」みたいな感じだった。（みんなで「バルス」ツイートするとかまさにそういう感じ）

そういう雑多で賑やかな観客席に耳（目）を傾けて、気になった情報を自分なりにピックアップするほうが #RSS #Feed リーダーで情報を総当たりで消費していくよりも気軽だったのも、ユーザー（自分）が当時 #RSS を使わなくなっていた理由だった気がする。

その頃は「 #SNS に囲い込まれる」なんてことは思いも寄らなかったけど、最近は #X が外部リンクを伴う投稿の露出を減らしていたりする話（イーロン・マスクが最近言及したというだけで今に始まったことではないっぽいが）とか見ていると、いまはもう #SNS は観客席ではなくひとつ舞台になっていて #SNS 側も従来の記事的な情報をコンテンツとして欲するようになり、インプレッションやモデレーションを盾にユーザーにそれを要求している雰囲気を感じる。

そうなると、ユーザー（というか自分）が #RSS :rss: から離れていった当時とは、 #SNS という呼ばれているものがすでに変容していて、だからこそまた今 #RSS 使うようになっているんだと思う。

#Google がいかにして #RSS :rss: を無効化してきたかの歴史を振り返る記事。

:tony_sigh: Chrome から :rss: のボタンを削除
:tony_sigh: #FeedBurner を買収した後に閉鎖
:tony_sigh: #GoogleReader の閉鎖
:tony_sigh: #Google アラートから :rss: の機能を削除
:tony_sigh: :rss: の #Chrome アドオンも削除
:tony_sigh: #GoogleNews からも :rss: を削除
:tony_neutral: 2021年に #Chrome の :rss: の機能の復活に取り組んでると発表したがその後、正式リリースについては音沙汰なし

こうやって振り返ると、#Google はある時期からあらゆるプロダクトのユーザーから :rss: の存在を隠すというか消していってるんだよな…

https://openrss.org/blog/how-google-helped-destroy-adoption-of-rss-feeds

From @pluralistic: "You should be using an #RSS reader."
https://pluralistic.net/2024/10/16/keep-it-really-simple-stupid/#read-receipts-are-you-kidding-me-seriously-fuck-that-noise

One of the best arguments for RSS you'll ever find.

I was a heavy user of #GoogleReader until G pulled the plug. I haven't found an adequate replacement since then. And I've tried many.

I'm excited by the possibilities of #Mastodon as an RSS reader. If you want to follow a site with an RSS feed, you can follow it on Mastodon with @birb.

I follow dozens of RSS feeds on Mastodon & add new ones almost every day.

@JoergA You're welcome. Ich verwende selbst @newsblur als Dienst für rss. Kostet glaube 30$ im Jahr. Und kann man auch selbst hosten. War ich bisher nur zu faul für. 😁 #newsblur #rss #feed #googlereader #reader

@iamlayer8 @DigitalNaiv @kaffeeringe @IceCubesApp Habe auch nie ernsthaft was anderes benutzt. Der Tod von #googlereader hat mich aber damals schwer getroffen. Seitdem bin ich über feedly bei @newsblur gelandet und kann es voll empfehlen. Nutze Premium, aber die paar Mücken sind es mir wert :)

Hubo un tiempo en el que #Google era sinónimo de éxito e innovación. Sí, también mataban servicios, pero lo hacían pronto y realmente eran cosas que nunca despegaron. El momento en el que para un servicio no era suficiente con que fuera bueno si no que además necesitaba ser rentable para sobrevivir, fue cuando esa empresa dejó de ser de fiar.
Jamás les perdonaré lo de #GoogleReader o #GoogleDomains más recientemente.
#enshittification

From: @corbet
https://social.kernel.org/objects/39125e2b-0997-4c90-86f9-b16229bf4b52