Google Reader
Cause of Death
Homicide by corporate strategy; Google determined Reader competed with Google+ for social sharing and discontinued it to consolidate users on the newer platform, which itself died six years later
Toxicology Report — Contributing Factors
Google+ social strategy (External pressure, acute)
Google "Spring Cleaning" initiative (Institutional toxin)
Declining to measure value of power users vs casual users (Analytical failure)
Announced with 3 months notice, zero user migration tools (Procedural negligence)
Last Words
""We want to give these products the love and attention they deserve. We've decided to focus on fewer products that have bigger impact." — Google, in the announcement that killed Reader, misidentifying the impact Reader had"
Witness Statements
""I signed the petition to save Google Reader. 150,000 people signed the petition. Google said thank you and shut it down anyway. I have not trusted a Google product since, which turns out to have been reasonable foresight." — Former Google Reader user, maintaining the petitions"
— Witness 1
""Reader was the infrastructure of how information professionals tracked the internet. Journalists, researchers, bloggers, developers — this was how they followed 200 sources without visiting 200 websites. When it died, everyone either left RSS entirely or moved to Feedly. Most left." — Digital media consultant"
— Witness 2
""The decision to kill Reader to promote Google+ is one of the most straightforwardly incorrect strategic decisions I observed in a decade at a major tech company. Reader was valuable. Google+ was not. Reader users were engaged. Google+ users were not voluntarily there. We killed the living thing to save the dead thing. The dead thing died anyway." — Former Google employee, in hypothetical testimony"
— Witness 3
""I exported my OPML file. I imported it to Feedly. It worked fine. I was angrier than the situation required, but I think what I was actually angry about was being reminded that Google can take away any of its products at any time and you have no recourse." — User, correctly identifying the actual grievance"
— Witness 4
Could It Have Been Saved?
Yes. Google Reader had active users, demonstrated utility, and no revenue model that was considered worth building. The decision to shut it down was driven by the Google+ strategy, which was itself a failed strategy. Google killed a working, valued product in service of a product that did not work and was not valued. This is the Bureau's clearest case of management error in this report. Reader could have been monetised, spun off, or simply maintained. It was instead eliminated.
Legacy
Google Reader's death fragmented the RSS ecosystem. The power users scattered to Feedly, NewsBlur, and Inoreader. The casual users simply stopped following RSS feeds. This shift materially contributed to the decline of the open web and the rise of algorithmic social media feeds as the primary means of content discovery. By killing a tool that helped people curate their own information diet, Google inadvertently strengthened the case for letting Google curate it instead. The Bureau notes this irony with extreme displeasure.
Bureau Epitaph
✝
Google Reader
2005-10-07 — 2013-07-01
"Here lies Google Reader. It helped you read the internet on your own terms. Google had other plans for your terms."