As you may know, Google is shutting down its RSS reader in a few weeks. When they announced this in March, I was one of their users who relied on it and then spent hours trying out alternative products to organize my daily reading. I didn't really worry too much about why Google was shutting Reader down, since to me was a free service without any direct revenue stream for them.
This Wired article points out that Google's motive is to move people towards an "active" model of news consumption, where we get our news throughout the day through Google's Now and Plus products. I don't know about everyone else, but I find RSS is still an effective way to get news during the day. And it's not like I'm going to read something just because Google pushes a notification to my phone. I'm only going to look at the apps when I have time to read through the articles, which is the same thing I got from the Reader app.
After last weekend's classes on search and how Google benefits from collecting personalized information, I see this as a missed opportunity for Google. Reader seems like it should be a great way for them to collect data that can complement search data: what topics a person follows, which keywords get him to click on an article, and how often he checks in on each blog. This data would have also been a great way to feed Google Now so it could learn about our reading habits. Unless, of course, they already know everything about us.
This Wired article points out that Google's motive is to move people towards an "active" model of news consumption, where we get our news throughout the day through Google's Now and Plus products. I don't know about everyone else, but I find RSS is still an effective way to get news during the day. And it's not like I'm going to read something just because Google pushes a notification to my phone. I'm only going to look at the apps when I have time to read through the articles, which is the same thing I got from the Reader app.
After last weekend's classes on search and how Google benefits from collecting personalized information, I see this as a missed opportunity for Google. Reader seems like it should be a great way for them to collect data that can complement search data: what topics a person follows, which keywords get him to click on an article, and how often he checks in on each blog. This data would have also been a great way to feed Google Now so it could learn about our reading habits. Unless, of course, they already know everything about us.
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