Google Reader: What's the Controversy About?

This week, Google announced that on July 1^st, it will be retiring its service Google Reader, the company’s service for viewing blogs through an RSS (“rich site summary”) feed.

The demise of this service, covered here and here, has caused two common reactions, as USA Today reports: “What’s Google Reader?” and “How could you?” Indeed, I had heard of Google reader as a service to use to keep updated on news, events, etc. but did not use the service myself; I do, however, know many people that are upset about the end of its run. Google Reader, as the article continues,  “was late to the field when this free service debuted in 2005, but it soon offered a tantalizing combination to RSS fans: a great Web interface, plus the ability to check the same feeds in standalone apps in computers and mobile devices.”

For many people, it is a core part of their internet use; a way for them to get information from a variety of sources in one feed on a daily (or even more frequent) basis. While there are plenty of other applications out now that serve similar functions (I am partial to Flipboard), it would appear that Google Reader is affecting a wide segment of the population, one that is uproarious, at least in the digital world.

This made me consider our conversations about technology’s role in communication that we had in class; we have come to a point where we cannot seem to live without digital communication. From blogs to news sources, Flipboard to Facebook, the majority of us get most of our news in digital form. As Damien Smith-Pfister and Jordan Soliz explain in their piece, “(Re)conceptualizing Intercultural Communication in a Networked Society”: “The internet, by reducing cost and access barriers, albeit unevenly, produces a range of for a from websites to blogs to social networking…these new sites…help constitute communities of discourse united by shared interest and, in some cases, even produce novel styles of communication” (247). Indeed, we are all part of various digital communities when we take part in using a specific website, or aggregator like Google Reader, in our daily lives.

The controversy over Google Readers’ decision to shut down will eventually die out, and a new leader in RSS feed/information gathering will emerge for the digital community. The question is, what do these websites have to provide to get people to become loyal to their services? And how was Google Reader able to do so?