Have you taken a breath from the news that Google is closing Reader? That's just not necessary to pretend that you are surprised :) When they closed Wave, I was silent, when they closed Health, I was silent, when they closed Picasa Web, I was silent, then they came for me. Google does this all the time and very often hits the most favorite services. If you want to perceive the world sensibly, then do not look at freaks in glasses with superimposed reality, at statues of a green robot in front of luxurious offices, at eccentric employees at conferences, and do not dream "if I were there" and I would put my 20% of the time! Google, just like other companies like them, is not about this.
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These are corporations that are traded on the stock exchange and should earn money for large and small investors, stockholders. This company has no other purpose, just like any other in this world. Of course, there is an idea that is drummed into employees every day in offices that they connect the world with information, make ideas more feasible and generally change the world. Not without that. But the main thing is earnings, and we only need to pay attention to this "main thing", leave the rest of the crap to Google employees. Today, Google is the world's largest advertising agency, which is approaching half of the global advertising market in terms of its sales, if not more. All this is thanks to a single profile service — search and an advertising network service sewn to it. Search and advertising network create a big pump of money, for which the whole corporation exists. Not for the sake of Google Reader, not for the sake of convenient mail and competition with Apple in the mobile market (this is just an attempt to sell advertising there and control user data for a better advertising sales service).
About Google Reader: it's time to stop believing in Santa Claus and free convenient Google services. Own mail, own rss aggregator and jabber server.
— Ganger Hrolf (@ganger70) March 14, 2013
And now let's look at the company's non-core services and try to think what exactly we entrusted to Google and what will happen if this service is taken away from us. We didn't look at all the services, but only those that many people know about.
Everyone's favorite Gmail! 20 GB in the mailbox, and maybe even more. On the right you have an advertisement that is shown depending on what you write in letters and what they write to you. Awesome Imagine for a second that some European Parliament, ordinary bureaucratic rats that have multiplied, adopt a law on the inadmissibility of reading your mail by advertising bots. There will be less advertising and I am willing to submit messages that say "We understand that the service is loved by our users, but the growth has stopped. And yes, why don't you exchange messages on Google+ with Google+ users, like on Facebook*?" Exaggerated and a little silly, but why not? Where is the advertising money pump and where is your mail?
I think it would be wise to advise you to read mail in mail programs like Outlook, Thunderbird or Mail.app. They will close, and the mail will remain with you. Of course, the mail for domains will remain untouched — money is paid for it. It's the same with calendars and documents. Use desktop programs to work with remote calendars and backup data locally from Google Drive using the synchronization client.
Yes, if you thought that everything would end on Google Reader, you made a mistake — now Google is closing the CalDAV API as well. Who was there shouting that AES is bad?
— Eugen (@jenjaman) March 14, 2013
Have you not noticed that Picasa has become part of a bunch of unnecessary Google+ features? And also, at what point did you and I decide that photos should be stored on the Internet? Of course, you have a lot of time to read comments, mark up friends and all that, but that's not what we're talking about. We're talking about the fact that your photos are also far from Google's core business. Why don't you put photos in albums in Lightroom or iPhoto, mark up places there, friends' faces? Are you afraid for safety? Backup it to Dropbox, box.com , Drobo or just on the network screw of the home network. Do not equip a "house" that you do not own. Everyone seems to understand about the house, but no one understands about web services.
When Google bought Twitter's brightest competitor, the Jaiku service, they shut it down. And Posterous was recently closed — blogging is not the most trending topic today (what did you think?) What prevents Google from closing your blog on Blogger? How will it be served? Easy :) "We have been doing Google+ for a long time and we believe that your blog will be more visited in it and will become "better"! You can upload blog posts and comments to Google Takeout and enjoy them alone." Or here's another option. "Blogger is Google's oldest service and we truly love it. But it was with a heavy heart that we discovered that more than 95% of blogs on it are spam search resources. We share your pain, but the blogger will be closed in half a year. The main focus!"
I think it's worth always remembering that there are services like WordPress.com or LiveJournal, which are somewhat more specialized to blogs, although catastrophically flawed (especially the latter). Also install the WordPress engine on your hosting and run your blog. Expenses are minimal, safety guarantees are excellent. Lifehacker has been in existence since 2007 and for these 7 years we have been little threatened. Here Google is definitely not our friend and not our enemy.
You don't know that most of your subscriptions to Google Reader (excuse the habit of writing like this) go through the FeedBurner service, which was bought by Google and which hasn't been changed a bit in the last TWO years. Clearly, the focus is not on this service of our advertising money vacuum cleaner. If the service is hacked tomorrow, then many blogs will not appear in your new RSS reader tomorrow. Blogs will lose readers. By the way, why do we need blogs if there is Google+? Really...
If you are a blogger and your readers subscribe to something like feeds.feebburner.com/blog_name , then make a direct feed and collect subscribers to it. Yes, before the reliability of feedburner was indisputable and we believed that we would not lose readers if we lost the domain. Losing feedburner today seems to me a little more likely than the domain about-everything.wiki.ru . our main feed today, by the way //about-everything.wiki.ru/feed /.
Do you know what it is? You're cool. I'm sure 90% of Google doesn't know about this service :) Will go under the knife, like a mother-in-law under the ice! Not a profile, not money, some kind of bullshit is shorter.
The groups have already been moved to Google+ once. Technically, they no longer exist. If you are very dependent on them, then tie up with this service. Use online paid CRM like Basecamp, Teamlab or Megaplan. There is also Yahoo! Groups — have not changed steadily for a long time, but who will understand Google graduate Marisa Meyer, who runs this company today?
What else have you entrusted to Google and why do you believe that everything will be the same?
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