[LINK] 'The End of Google Reader ...'

[Jim Birch]

David Boxall wrote:

Come to think of it, if they didn't charge for it, can it be called a
> business?
>

Google took the approach "the Internet is our business" because a bigger
Internet would produce more revenue.  That's why Google can spend money
building things like Reader and a massive amount of money building and
husbanding Android.  These things do produce revenue but they also have a
general effect of making the Internet more ubiquitous.

RSS has probably had it's day.  I doubt that one in 100 young Internet
users would use RSS or even know what Reader actually does.  They would
follow a Facebook page which can do similar things and a whole lot more,
or, use a site like Reddit that incorporates "crowd filtering" of junk from
the aggregation.  Prior to the internet there was a mentality of being
informed by reading - or at least scanning - everything from chosen sources
to stay informed.  I remember reading the Times cover-to-cover for a while
when I lived in London when I lived in London (back when it was worth
reading, and I had the time.)   On the Internet, there is for practical
purposes an infinite amount of material available so the quality of your
information is more related to the quality of your filtering.  The
practices and tools of people who grew up with the net reflect this.

Jim