With Google Reader shutting down on July 1^st, I feel like I’m in a funny and backwards situation.

A couple of years ago, I switched from having a offline application handle my RSS feeds (i.e., FeedReader) to an online version. It made sense at the time because going online meant that my reading would be synchronized across devices err computers, there weren’t non-computer devices back then. I even went so far as to think about creating my own RSS reader that would perform the sync. Alas nothing came of that.

Even though it was free, using online software such as Google Reader is like only having a license to the software. You don’t have to pay for it each month or each year, but once they decide to pull the plug, you’re up the creek – like a lot of people are finding out about Google Reader. If you have a offline “physical” version, then you can keep running the software as long as you have a copy (and as long as it can run on your OS). It’s a tradeoff, and now is when we lose.

There are some online alternatives, and they are easy to migrate to since you can just export a .opml file of all your feeds from Google Reader to the alternatives. But it won’t be so easy if they shut down GMail.

Posted by Kevin in Blogs Tags: google, rss, unnamedrssreaderproject