Google announced that they are discontinuing the Google Reader effectively after July 1,2013. They have declared it on their official blog. They also announced that they are also discontinuing more products like Google cloud connect, Apps script, Google Building Maker  and some other products too. Google said that  the product had a loyal but declining following, and that they wanted to focus on fewer products, so they are shutting down it. Google Reader is a content aggregator that is served by web feeds. It was introduced in  2005 by Google and quickly becomes popular too. The web app and android app is much popular among its user although they are not advanced as compare to its competitors but they are very useful and fast for those who wants to keep themself updated from multiple sources.

There are many features in Google reader that makes it most useful to read news and articles from various sources. The basic reader was introduced in 2005 after that many new designs and features were added in it. Google reader let you see all your news feed on the homepage of it. It has feature of automatically marking of items as read as they scrolled past. A user can subscribe to feeds by either Google reader’s search function or by entering the exact URL of the atom or RSS feed. A user is also able to give tags to his news so that he can find the particular news according to category he is defined. Later when Google introduces Google + to world, it removes the basic share and like button from the Google reader and places G+ share and G+ button on the Google reader. But most of the people don’t like this and Over 15,000 users have signed an online petition asking Google to reinstate the original interface. 

Now Google is going to shut Google reader people start petitions to save Google reader. Many people are doing e- signature to save it. Many websites and blogs start asking people to give their e- signature to save Google reader.

For those who uses Google reader as a habit, they need to find alternative like Feedly, The old reader, Netvibes and Taptu. In my opinion i found Feedly as a best alternative for Google reader. Because it has all the criteria to replace Google reader with it. Feedly is available to download on Google chrome, Mozila Firefox and Safari as a browser extension and its also available on android, ios and Kindle as app. It syncs all your settings to cloud so you can easily switch between devices.

According to Google,” We launched Google Reader 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. So, on July 1, 2013, we will retire Google Reader. Users and developers interested in RSS alternatives can export their data, including their subscriptions, with Google Takeout over the course of the next four months.”