Everybody knows Google Reader and how it impacts the lives of those who use the service on a regular basis. However, the new information emerging from the micro-blogging website has some bad news.
Google has recently revealed that the company will be starting yet another spring cleaning of its services, and this time around the company will be scrapping its Google Reader RSS aggregator, according to reports.
The information was revealed when Google put up the latest decision on the company's official blog confirming that the Google Reader will actually be not available starting July 1. "Google is retiring Google Reader," a Tweet states.
"We have just announced on the Official Google Blog that we will soon retire Google Reader (the actual date is July 1, 2013). We know Reader has a devoted following who will be very sad to see it go. We're sad too," the Google Reader blog writes.
The blog also provides a couple of reasons to justify the company's newest decision to retire Google Reader. It states that the usage of Google Reader has declined over the time, and the company is currently pouring all of its energy into fewer products, with a belief that this kind of focus will make for a better user experience.
However, although the new decision is a sudden one from Google, that doesn't mean the company will bypass all those users who have been ardent followers of the Google Reader. The blog says that to ensure a smooth transition, "we're providing a three-month sunset period so you have sufficient time to find an alternative feed-reading solution. If you want to retain your Reader data, including subscriptions, you can do so through Google Takeout."
Google Reader was launched 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.
Apart from killing off Reader, starting next week Google will also end its support for the Google Voice app for BlackBerry smartphones, and instead will point users toward the HTML5 webapp.
The company will stop selling or updating the desktop versions of its Snapseed photo editing app, and a number of other developer APIs will also be retired.
"These changes are never easy. But by focusing our efforts, we can concentrate on building great products that really help in their lives," the official blog adds.
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