Most of you never actually visit my blog, but instead, read it via Google Reader or some other RSS reader.
Google announced today that it's shuttering Google Reader later this year. This is bad news if you follow a lot of blogs, this is bad news if you have a blog of your own, and this is bad news if you use Google products. The message Google is sending is that no product, how awesome, how useful, is in jeopardy of being canceled, even if they've decimated the market to the point that no alternatives exist. This is essentially an abuse of a monopoly. Worse yet, they didn't even give people the option of maybe paying a yearly fee to keep using it. Or monetizing the offering with ads. Instead, they're simply shutting it down.
If you operate a blog, this will probably result in less people regularly reading your blog. If you have ads on it, that will mean less money for you. (And ironically, probably less money for Google.)
If they can cancel this today, what's to say they get tired of Google Voice or Gmail tomorrow? At the same time, they continue to invest in products like Google Chrome for which plenty of decent alternatives exist as well as silly projects like self-driving cars or glasses which have little screens on them so you can read your email while you're walking or driving. Well, ok, if people have these silly glasses on, I guess I'd rather they have a self-driving car.
But as readers of my blog, I hope you will please consider signing these two petitions. Not sure it'll do any good, but to quote Edmund Burke ""All tyranny needs to gain a foothold is for people of good conscience to remain silent." Tell Google to stop being evil.
- Change.org
- Whitehouse.gov (I know, this is amusing)
No comments:
Post a Comment