Ajnasz Blog

Yesterday Google announced that they will shut down Google Reader at 1. July, 2013. That affects the Google Reader Watcher extension pretty much, the add-on won't work when the day will come.

But what can we do after? Will be there a such a good service to get news updates? And if yes, will be there a browser plugin which will notify us when something new happens on the world?

For the first question I assume the answer is yes. I don't know who will win, currently I'm playing with feedly, but I don't know how will they react if their user number will start growing. They wrote on twitter, that they will introduce a paid version, which can means that the current setup will change. Maybe they will add a limitation of feeds, so for example we may will be able to use it free until we have less than like 40 feed subscription. Maybe they will add ads to the page and we can buy adfree version, I don't know. If they will put limitation, I don't think I will use it.
I'm sure there are good products which provides similar functinallity to Google Reader, we just need to find the best one.

For the second quest I want to say yes, but it depends.
As a developer I also need a good API to interact with the service. I will need to authenticate, I will need to be able to get details about the unread items, etc. If the service can provide it, I can port the extension and everyone will be happy.
I already contacted to feedly, but still don't know if it will be my choice or not. We have more than 3 months until the shutdown, maybe someone will build a brand new reader service which will beat all others. Who knows? I'm looking forward to it!