Google to retire Google Reader

Google is pulling the plug on it less mainstream RSS aggregation tool Google Reader, due to declining popularity.

The service would be discontinued from 1 July. In a Google blogpost on the company's move, senior vice-president of technical infrastructure, Urs Hölzle, said, Reader was launched in 2005 to help people track updates on their favourite sites, and it would be retired despite a loyal following.

"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," he wrote.

RSS, which stands for either rich site summary or really simple syndication, gained popularity with  news sites in particular, that encouraged users to subscribe to updates in their RSS reader via its distinctive orange button.

Though the feature retains much following among journalists who do not have quite as many options as comprehensive as RSS feeds from news sites these have been largely replaced by updates through Twitter, Flipboard and other networks.

Following the Wednesday night announcement, a petition on Change.org has received 15,000 signatures in support of Reader. Daniel Lewis the petitioner, who still relies on it several times a week despite using it less writes, "Our confidence in Google's other products – Gmail, YouTube, and yes, even Plus – requires that we trust you in respecting how and why we use your other products.

Google said, "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.''

Google Reader allows users to subscribe to and read feeds from all manner of publishers, in a format that resembles an e-mail in-box. The service, according to analysts was also an early experiment for Google in social networking, with the service's sharing features.

Google said on the day of the site's launch that the amount of information on the Web was rapidly increasing and Google Reader helped users keep up with it all by organising and managing all the content they were interested  in.

Google added that instead of users continuously checking their favourite sites for updates, they could let Google Reader do it for them.

However, tracking news through RSS never gained anywhere near the kind of following of other core Google products like search, maps, Android and YouTube. Facebook, Twitter and other social sites proved much more popular with users who wanted to share and real links.