By: iPadfanzz staff on March 14, 2013
Google is killing off Reader, its web-based RSS reading service, as part of its latest round of spring cleaning ritual used or unprofitable products. The service will be unavailable after July 1, 2013.
A popular RSS service among users, Google Reader has allowed users to download a copy of all their Reader data before July 1.
Before the shutdown, users can extract their RSS subscriptions and use them in another reader using Google Takeout. The users will reportedly receive their subscription data in an XML file.
In addition to killing off Reader, from next week Google is ending support for the Google Voice app for BlackBerrys, instead pointing users toward the HTML5 webapp.
Besides the internet giant will also no longer sell or update the desktop versions of its Snapseed photo editing app.
Experts, however, are calling the closure of Google Reader as “bad news” for the RSS protocol itself, which has seen waning popularity since the rise of social sharing services.
Google says that anyone not wanting to lose the data they have saved with Google Reader can download it using Google and store it in XML file.
Post the decision lots of loyal Google fans are worried over the closure. The website Change.org has started a petition to keep Google Reader going. The petition has passed 25,000 names, with Change.com's John Coventry saying that 2,000 more signatures are being added every hour.
Google launched Reader service in 2005 for people to keep track of updates to favored websites using RSS feeds.
