random thoughts about the end of Google Reader

• It's an understatement to say that Google is a rich and powerful company on the internet. Google is reputed to be a very smart company. Scrapping the Google Reader seems to be a public declaration that the days of blogging are numbered. Once I move on from feeling sad about this, and feeling annoyed about the disruption it will cause in my life, I wonder if it will also be a good thing for blogs to be slightly extricated from Google. This company is not infallible - I remember Google Buzz and other misteps.
• It's interesting that Google's focus on Google+ has been provided as the real reason why the Google Reader is being discontinued. I used to use the liking and sharing features on Google Reader, but stopped using these when they were assimilated into Google+. There is no way that I'll be using Google+ more when Google Reader is gone.
• Feedburner will be next - I wonder if losing the Google Reader and Feedburner will cause any disruption in libraries, particularly special libraries?
• Twitter is not the answer - at least for my blog reading. I always appreciate it when people tweet about a new blog post, but the chance that I will always see these tweets is zero. I simply subscribe to too many feeds and I'm not in a work environment where I can keep an eye on them all day. The upshot is that I miss a lot of stuff. Google Reader and other dedicated blog readers made it possible infrequent  readers like me not to miss things. In Twitter and Facebook, the ethos seems to be, "you snooze, you lose."
• I think I'll give NetNewsWire for Mac another go. I used to like it back in the day (2002-04) when it was my main way of reading blogs before I switched to Bloglines and then Google Reader. Although I like Flipboard and other tablet apps, for me it's more important that my blog reading happens in an environment which also allows me to write blog posts (should I feel inspired to do so).
• I don't cull my blog subscriptions frequently. It's not an activity I particularly enjoy, but I have decided to give my subscriptions an autumn cleaning before I leave the Google Reader. There's no point in subscribing to blogs which have become infested with spam posts or haven't been updated since 2007. I'm an occasional blogger and I can make all sorts of arguments that there is no downside to subscribing to an infrequent blogger in RSS, but even I have my limits, and for me that's twelve months. If you haven't posted in a year, I'll assume that you're no longer blogging. I'll also be dropping a few blogs which may still be active, but which I have drifted from in the last few years.
• At first I was shocked when I heard the news about the Google Reader, then angry and then depressed. Now I feel ok about it. Google was so dominant with its Google Reader, I am glad that there will be some diversity in this space again.
• Nonetheless, I will miss using the Google Reader. It was very well done, especially before they integrated it with Google+. But I am also glad that one part of my online life will not be completely dependent on Google.
• When I first started blogging over ten years ago, I was very aware of the disjunction between my online life and everyone else in my life. At the time this disjunction annoyed and frustrated me. But over the years it has gradually eroded and has virtually disappeared, thanks to the likes of Facebook and Twitter. Now I kind of miss how it was in those early years when things weren't so integrated. I wonder if this is just regular nostalgia, or could it be that there's something positive to be said for a more fractured life?