Last week, we got awful news from Google. And that was they are shutting down Google Reader on July 1st. This is pretty bad news for all of us that use Google Reader and Google Reader apps like Press. But we’ve also seen some other news sites make a seemless transition for Google Reader users, like Feedly. In fact they’ve reported over 500,000 new users since Google announced it was axing Google Reader last week. When I found out that Google Reader was going to be gone, I went and tried Feedly, and it was pretty slow that day, since everyone was hammering their servers.
Google says that they are shutting down Reader due to a decline in usage and Google’s plan to focus on services that do better. But what Google doesn’t realize is that Reader has a very dedicated userbase. Buzzfeed has uploaded an image that shows their traffic data comparing Google Reader to Google+. As you can see, Google Reader brings in far more traffic than Google+
There’s also been some talk, rather rumors, that Google+ staff is looking to integrate Google Reader features into Google+ in the near future. We’ll have to see if that does happen, but that could help ease the pain for those of us that have been using Google Reader for years. For me, I use Google Reader all day long. So it’s going to be hard to use another service like Feedly. Not because it’s a bad service or anything, but we don’t like change.
Here’s where you can help. There is a petition over on Change.org that is attempting to persuade Google to save Google Reader. It is already over 125k signatures and needs 150k. Now this doesn’t mean it will save Google Reader, but it’ll at least get more attention on it and hopefully get Google to reconsider. There is also a new website keepgooglereader.com which is trying to persuade Google into open sourcing the code and making it a community project. That might work better, and Google Reader might get some cool new features too.
Check out both websites and sign the petition, if you want to help Save Google Reader! Let us know down in the comments how often you use Google Reader.