Google Reader R.I.P. (2005 – 2013)

As hard as it might be to believe that it’s been three-and-a-half months since Google announced its planned shuttering of its Reader service… believe it. While many still believe that Google’s decision here is a nonsensical and inconvenient one, we’re fortunate to have a large number of good alternatives. In fact, I believe the RSS + feed situation to have gotten better since Google’s announcement, because these competing services have been working hard to lure you in and give you a new home.

That said, I personally haven’t found another solution that I’d call “perfect”, although I’ve using Feedly (aka: the Web’s new de facto standard) since Google made its announcement. Recently, Feedly moved itself entirely to its own cloud, and catering to Google Reader users, an extra list view has been added. Overall, I’ve enjoyed using the service, though a couple of niggles still remain; A) I need to relogin all too often either on the desktop or mobile and B) on mobile, if I tab out to another app and then come back, Feedly simply restarts itself and puts me back at my first feed – annoying, to say the least. Of course, these issues can and I’m sure will be fixed in time.

R.I.P., Google Reader. *sniff*

On the topic of Feedly, now would be a perfect time to steer you towards an article we published a couple of months ago which lists off a number of worthwhile RSS + feed alternatives. The general consensus is that Feedly is the de facto choice, so if you simply want anything, without having to spend time testing out different solutions, you’ll likely be happy there. If you don’t mind investing the time, though, you’re bound to wind up in a solution that better suits you (even one that isn’t mentioned in the article… there are many). 

If you were a Google Reader user left stranded, where did you ultimately wind up? And for that matter, even if you haven’t used Reader, what’s your preferred news aggregator?