… doesn’t mean Google aren’t being assholes by breaking it. Especially when they try to spin the changes as “improvements” they’ve made due to popular demand (I’d love to see them publish a before-and-after feature list and still claim that the new version is in any way better).
5 years ago I ditched Bloglines because the relatively new Google Reader was better. Heaps of other people did similar things, and before long there was virtually no serious competition for reading RSS feeds online.
If you make a useful product, get everyone used to it, many dependant on it, then break that product in a ham-fisted attempt to further your ambitions in the social networking space, you are are being a giant dick. Google is being a giant dick.
As depressing as their new flat-n-grey theme is (just like intepid at the time of writing, but I’m just one guy and I’m color-blind), it’s the removal of a key feature that has me still fuming even days after the deed was done– the demise of the “share” function.
Before, when I shared a post on Reader it would be available as a special feed to anyone who was interested. Effectively it was an incredibly convenient way to create a curated feed. In fact that’s how I’ve been generating my “Things I’m reading” links in the sidebar here. Anyone could visit an URL to see this feed, regardless of whether they had a google profile or not. I could even share new articles into this feed using a nifty bookmarklet! I also subscribed to the shared feeds of friends, because I am interested in reading the things that my friends deem interesting. If I commented on a post in reader, it would be visible to any of my friends who read the same post.
Now, the only sharing option visible is to hit the +1 button, and then hit it again to Share to your G+ stream. The same stream that has every other bit of ephemeral crap I might fart out on G+. And you can’t easily get a feed of that stream, not that you’d really want to. That’s why I was starting to use Reader more and more and Twitter less and less. I really don’t give a shit about people’s status updates 99% of the time. If I comment on a post, my friends don’t even see it in G+ unless they are reading the exact same post, which is unlikely because they are probably seeing a version shared in G+ so it has a whole different set of comments attached– unlike in pre-lobotomised Reader, where when you shared a post it would still be the same, canonical post.
I don’t have a problem with them adding the +1 sharing option, I just don’t see why they had to tear out one of the best features of the product to make room for it.
As of this writing, it seems the shared items feed is still active on the back-end, and can even be added to via 3rd party apps like Flipboard, so I have some small hope they will bring it back. But considering that they’ve already killed the “Share to Reader” bookmarklet I’m not holding my breath.
Update: Flipboard just removed the ability to share to Google Reader, so I’m guessing it’s not coming back. Thanks a bunch, Google.