Google Reader

[chuckles]

Dark Sky is like the modern-day Google Reader.

You're right.

People loved it.

I mean, there's just a huge apparatus to essentially obfuscate the negative impact that the consolidation of online advertising, which is, again, Google's main business main thing and all that sort of like rot onto the world, you know? So, yeah.

Well, and during that era, they unceremoniously killed Google Reader.

I'll never get over it.

It was a short-lived Google product that brought all the blogs, newspapers, and online journalism things that you liked into one place.

I think about like reverse HTTP, but it's not really reverse HTTP.

I think you can correct me if I'm wrong, but I think that some of this went on to inspire some stuff that ultimately ran at Google and maybe also powered Google Reader.

Is that do you know what I'm talking about or?

Is this the PubSubHubbub?

and another Google colleague of his, Brett Slatkin.

And they were just trying to reduce the need for polling.

If a Google reader would have to poll all these feeds.

So the idea was if you get these feed providers to implement PubSubHubbub, then there's a subscription API where you'll get a webhook I don't know that it had the payload, but then you would know, now I can go and check.

I guess my mind is I've always been a consumer product person.

I love products, so for me, it's easier to think of a new feature to add to my DJ streaming app or, um, you know, my sort of Google Reader for X that I use than it is to kind of find a part of my life to automate.

But you're right, there's some fun examples.

You know, I posted about one a few weeks ago where I had my laptop, um, transcribe everything that was happening in the kitchen, and then it would, um, award or detract screen time from my son's iPad, depending on whether he was being good or bad.

I, I miss, um...

And Google Reader was huge for me in finding-

Mm

... people's blogs, blogs and art.

... kind of gun for AI almost immediately.

Mm.

Um, but it's just called The Old Reader, and it's just like an old-fashioned website desktop RSS feed, um, pretty much like Google Reader used to be.

So I use that now for, like, mailing list and newsletters, 'cause that does seem to be the way that it's going.

I'm going to switch because since we're getting Android XR glasses, it's kind of like my Google Glass from the past coming back.

So I'm going to say Google Reader.

Do you remember Google Reader? Did you ever use Google Reader?

I'm familiar with it.

It was RSS feed

congregate.

God, I loved Google Reader.

What I find funny about that, and what I find funny about all RSS features, is I see so many people prompting LLMs to just do RSS feeder-like

I guess my mind is I've always been a consumer product person.

I love products, so for me it's easier to think of a new feature to add to my DJ streaming app or, um, you know, my sort of Google Reader for X that I use than it is to kind of find a part of my life to automate.

But- You're right, there's some fun examples.

You know, I posted about one a few weeks ago where I had my laptop, um, transcribe everything that was happening in the kitchen, and then it would, um, award or detract screen time from my son's iPad, depending on whether he was being good or bad.

In addition to not quite going far enough into the data replication and adding some of the other pieces that we've been able to add on with App Proto and things like that, it also just had some basic usability issues.

And people always point to the fact that, oh, Google killed Google Reader or whatever it was, but at the end of the day, RSS was just kind of not quite...

there in terms of like a UX.

And then Facebook and Twitter and everybody else kind of came along and essentially took the components of RSS and built the user experience around it.