How to Survive a Google Reader Shutdown

It’s offi­cial. Google announced that it was time for a Google Reader shut­down, the RSS aggre­ga­tor used by mil­lions to keep up to date with count­less blogs, like mine. I have a plan.

In case you missed it, here’s a bit of the announce­ment that came from Google about the Google Reader shutdown.

We launched Google Reader in 2005 in an effort to make it easy for peo­ple to dis­cover and keep tabs on their favorite web­sites. While the prod­uct has a loyal fol­low­ing, over the years usage has declined. So, on July 1, 2013, we will retire Google Reader. Users and devel­op­ers inter­ested in RSS alter­na­tives can export their data, includ­ing their sub­scrip­tions, with Google Take­out over the course of the next four months.

As an avid user of Google Reader, this news really blows! It’s prob­a­bly my most used Google tool. It’s a sim­ple, clean inter­face that allows me to quickly peruse a num­ber of arti­cles, yet keep up with the con­tent of each site that is impor­tant to me.

Other ser­vices are eager to fill the gap. Feedly announced its method to migrate your Google Reader sub­scrip­tions to its ser­vices, but I’m just not feel­ing it. Not only because Feedly doesn’t seem to run on Safari (my pre­ferred browser), but for a more impor­tant rea­son that’s revealed by the Google Reader shutdown.

You Can’t Trust a Mid­dle Man

Here’s the crux of it. When you put some busi­ness between a provider and a con­sumer, the middle-​man has no loy­alty to either side. It’s just there to serve its own inter­ests. That’s not a bright way to do busi­ness, even if the busi­ness is free. As we see, Google is shut­ting down its middle-​man ser­vice. That leaves mil­lions of users and web con­tent providers out in the cold. The con­duit for con­sump­tion just got yanked out from under their feet. It hurts the reader and the con­tent provider. Google doesn’t care about either.

What options do you have left? Are you going to visit each one of those sites every day to see if there’s new, fresh con­tent? Unlikely. The advan­tage of an RSS ser­vice is that it brings the con­tent to you when it’s avail­able. If only there were some other Inter­net ser­vice that could to the same thing. Hmmm.

How to Sur­vive a Google Reader Shutdown

Here’s my advice, both as a user of Google Reader and a web con­tent provider who deliv­ered con­tent by RSS. Don’t sign up for Feedly, Flip­board or any other ser­vice that’s going to try and take advan­tage of the gap that the Google Reader shut­down just cre­ated. All that does is move your vul­ner­a­bil­ity from one pot­hole to another.

Instead, start sub­scrib­ing to your favorite blogs by e-​mail. Yes, that’s right. E-​mail. It’s reli­able and vendor-​neutral. You still get con­tent deliv­ered straight to you and there are plenty of free e-​mail providers — even GMail. Build some rules to fil­ter your con­tent by each sub­scrip­tion and you can very quickly & eas­ily keep up with your blog posts. If you use GMail, it even works with the same key­board short­cuts as Google Reader to move from one mes­sage to the next.

If you look at the top of my web site, you’ll see a big Sub­scribe but­ton. Go ahead, click it and sub­scribe. When I cre­ate a new post, you’ll get it deliv­ered right to your email. You can read it on prac­ti­cally any device that con­nects to the Inter­net. It’s old-​school and direct. Not only that, but you can eas­ily keep arti­cles from web con­tent providers that you like and delete the rest. Your old RSS sub­scrip­tion didn’t make it that easy to go back and find the stuff you liked, did it?

If you ever decide you don’t want to get posts any­more, there’s a URL at the bot­tom of each e-​mail to unsub­scribe with­out any has­sle at all. I don’t spam my read­ers, I never trade or sell their e-​mail addresses to any­one. It’s all pri­vate between you and me.

Trust me!