Wednesday, November 2, 2011

Google Reader Disaster

Count me with Tyler Cowen, Bruce Bartlett, and Brad DeLong - the new Google Reader is an absolute disaster.  Details here.  This has certainly soured me on the whole cloud/software-as-a-service thing.  One morning the provider just ups and decides to upgrade me to something much worse than what I had before.  I get no notice, no choice, and no recourse.  What on earth where they thinking?

Update: Hallelujah: a solution! (h/t Paul Kedrosky)

9 comments:

Mattia Paoli said...

I agree with you.
Unfortunately Google Reader is a "free" service, the only solution is to find a better online RSS Reader... Google can do theoretically what it want...

The only problem is that Google Reader is the best service that I can find :(

yvesT said...

Tired G reader a couple of times, but for blogs RSS flows following I find netvibes much more convenient (and info more packed readable on the screen)

KLR said...

Oddly enough I installed the Chrome extension Minimalist Google Reader on my machine just the other day; this allows you to get rid of various bits of clutter in the interface - header, search bar, etc. Die, die, die! So for me nothing's changed much, really.

Doyu Shonin said...

Maybe they saw Social Network and thought the lead character's attitude was kind of cool. "Works for him, so ... "

Greg said...

Remember: if it's free, you're not the customer, you're the product.

rjs said...

ditto...what's the value of all that white space?

on my monitor, i'm only catching ten headlines at a time now; i'm sure i could view 2 dozen before...

Mr. Sunshine said...

Cloud Computing is to Human Knowledge as Electronic Financial Transactions are to Gold Coins.

HalFiore said...

Somehow, I've managed to get this far in life, and even use the intertubes a lot more than I ought to, without even knowing what RSS means.

Ace said...

The entire 'upgrade' to all Google apps is like the Microsoft ribbon bar debacle; unwelcome and non-optional.

I have to think that the Google interface testers have more screen real estate than I do and the aesthetic police lack any visual taste buds.