Goodbye Good Reader

For the last couple of years, I've been an avid user of Google Reader. From the initial usage of one feed upto my current set of 20 or so. I use for it following various tech related blogs as well for keeping an eye on friend's Flickr feeds.

But it appears that time has come to an end, as of July 1st 2013, Google Reader will no longer be available. The official Google announcement is here, but anyone who does use it will receive a pop up when they next sign in to the web client (no idea if the app pops up a warning yet).

Fortunately, Google have been kind enough to give users 3 months warning and also to allow you export your feed data and subscriptions in XML and JSON formats via Google Takeout.
Feed exports are broken down as follows (take from http://www.dataliberation.org/google/reader):

Your subscriptions are provided in an xml file and the following are provided in json files:

• List of people that you follow
• List of people that follow you
• Items you have starred
• Items you have liked
• Items you have shared
• Items shared by people you follow
• Notes you have created
• Items with comments

So, what's next? Well I guess I'll have to find another online reader that supports Android and BlackBerry apps (or has a very good mobile web interface). Or I'll find another reader to install locally...to all my machines.

I'll be sorry to see Google Reader go, it's very incredibly useful. Hopefully, if Google are "

pouring all of our energy into fewer products"

then we'll see some improvements and changes to their remaining services to make them better!