Well, there goes that. Google Reader is going down in three and a half months, and the Internet is losing its collective shit. Not least because basically every RSS reader for mobile devices relies on Google Reader for backbone sync.
Be interesting to see who steps up, because from the outcry, there’s a market for people who need this service. Marissa? In the meantime, if you recall, of all the Google services, the two I couldn’t do without were Maps and Reader. Well, Apple has Maps covered for mobile devices now…not perfectly, but good enough. It would be easy to run Google-free. Inconvenient, but the last irreplaceable part of the Google ecosystem has just pulled the plug, and the makers of those RSS apps will not just throw up their hands and say “oh for fuck’s sake” – Feedly and Reeder have already announced that they won’t go quietly and Feedly is even working on an API that could be a drop-in replacement.
Meanwhile, one thing is obvious, and has been for a while: if you’re building a product that depends on Google for a critical function, you’re an idiot.