Inventor of RSS perfectly okay with demise of Google Reader

Dave Winer, the inventor of RSS syndication and blogs took to his own blog after Google announced that it would be pulling the plug on its Reader.

His first sentence sums up his feelings succinctly, “I won’t miss it.” Winer does elaborate a bit however and his thoughts were not kind to Google. Moreover, he ribbed the users out there too that depend on such services.

Indeed, if Google Reader was that important to you, “Next time, please pay a fair price for the services you depend on. Those have a better chance of surviving the bubbles.” It is certainly possible survive the demise of Google Reader by using any number of other services.

"I won't miss it. Never used the damn thing. Didn't trust the idea of a big company like Google's interests being so aligned with mine that I could trust them to get all my news.

And besides, I didn't think the mailbox approach to news was right. Who cares how many unread items there are. I like the river of news approach and I have a very fine set of rivers that keep me well supplied with news and podcasts. Have a look.

http://tabs.mediahackers.org/?panel=dave

July 1 isn't that far away, but there's time to get it together. Next time, please pay a fair price for the services you depend on. Those have a better chance of surviving the bubbles." - Dave Winer

It is a fair point, with the giant elephant leaving the room, there is going to be a huge opportunity for alternative, and arguably superior, RSS feeders to work with. In addition, news scripts can include features that are important to them but maybe were not permitted by Google in the past. It is a back-door way of controlling what news is available to whom.

So, if your routine will be disrupted by July, you have a lot of choices to work with up to and including signing on to a petition to hopefully keep Google Reader around. However, if the guy that invented the standard is not concerned, take a page from his blog and assess your needs.

sources: Dave Winer