The Death of Google Reader reminds me of the Death of Newsraider.

A long time ago in a development house, far, far away we were working hard on our cross-platform application called "NewsRaider". It was an advanced program that would go to news websites, find the unread articles, strip them of all the adverts, junk and irrelevancies and then output them to a bespoke application on a handheld, desktop, PDA and website. In its time NewsRaider (published by Proporta), was pretty advanced and, for a while, it gained that popularity of momentum that our TomeRaider app had for many years, at least in SW lifespan terms. We were proud of it.

Then...

I remember the day well. I was in the office in Columbo when Dilan, the director and lead coder, called me over and said, to paraphrase, "look at this, this kills NewsRaider, doesn't it?"

What We were looking at was Google's Brand new "Reader" website. Dilan was right, the web based approach meant that our bespoke install based approach, no matter how innovative, couldn't compete with great free gifts in the cloud..  Pretty much there and then, we realised the game was up, for "Newsraider." Another one bites the dust(this principle gives software development a vibrancy that most wouldn't expect).

I loved Google Reader as much as a grown man can love a web-based news aggregator, and with no bitterness, I was an avid user, right from the start. In many ways, I felt its greatest fan, for many years. 

Today(ish), Google Reader itself got disinterized by Google. That which creates, also destroys. The cause of the anhiliation of the loved newsaggreation remains largley unspecified. Google Reader has joined Newsraider and Diggfeeder in the place where dead software goes, and there is a mystery as to the motive, to my mind.

Like the Mccafees, I am not bitter. But I am a little surprised.

Tech On Down