Google Reader’s remaining fans will be distraught to know that Google has finally shut down its content aggregator, citing declining use, despite the multitude of online petitions that have been passed around the internet imploring them to reconsider.
Google has left a goodbye message on the site in question:
‘Google Reader has been discontinued. We want to thank all our loyal fans. We understand you may not agree with this decision, but we hope you’ll come to love these alternatives as much as you loved Reader.’
Among the alternatives listed that Google Reader’s fan base is probably investigating at the moment, Feedly seems to be the most popular substitute, having announced that they received 500,000 new users a mere 48 hours after Google announced Reader’s discontinuation. A further 3 million new users joined over the following two weeks.
Digg has also announced plans to build their own Google Reader replacement, with modifications to try and make it a better content aggregator with new features to make use of social network activity.
Google Reader users have been given until 12PM PST 15 July to rescue their Reader data before it is ‘permanently and irrevocably deleted.’ If you were a regular user of the service, you should grab your RSS newsfeed subscriptions from Reader, using Google Takeout, a Google service that allows you to download all of your data from all Google services you use, such as Google+ and YouTube.