I personally have been a big fan of the Google Reader tool, and have recommended it on numerous occasions to friends, staff and others. I was trawling through my Google Reader feeds and saw a new blog post from both the Google Blog and the Google Reader blog detailing the retirement of the Google Reader service.

Even Scott put up a great blog post about the usefulness of Google Reader just recently.

I must admit I had to read Google’s blog posts twice. Google Reader is scheduled to be powered off on the 1st July 2013.

In the blog post on the Google Reader blog there are two simple reasons mentioned for the powering down of Google reader,

• Steadily declining user base 
• Google has a focus on maintaining fewer core applications

I can appreciate both points. There is little reason to continue assigning resources to an application not being used heavily, however I would suggest that possibly it was worth integrating this application in with something else for example Google Mail, similar to the RSS feed support Outlook has (I was also going to also suggest integrating into iGoogle, but that is being phased out too!). Keeps those die hard fans like myself happy!

Further, companies always need to ensure they focus on what is important. It is a simple concept that if you spread your resources to thin, your ability to achieve you goals is hindered, which is why Google is only focusing on where it can make the mots difference.

Being a heavy user of the Google Reader service, I admit it will be difficult to see this service turned off. However now is the time to begin looking at alternatives.

For me personally I heavily use Google Reader on my mobile so my requirements will most likely be for a cloud / web based RSS feeder offering.

The common options seem to be,

• NewsBlur
• NetVibes
• Freedly

If you are like me and use Google Reader primarily on your mobile, you could also consider an RSS application specific to your phone platform. Lifehacker have a couple of great articles giving some recommendations for both Andorid and IPhone.

There are some desktop applications also that could also be considered if you primarily use RSS feeds on your laptop or PC, from my brief searching FeedDemon seems to be the popular one. Plus Outlook has some built in RSS feed functionality if you want to avoid installing another app.

I do hope this is not a trend that will continue across other similar applications made by other providers, though we must all keep in the back of our mind that when you offer a service for free there will always be some sort of expiry date as a business shifts, grows and moves forward.

If you have any suggestions on some Google Reader alternatives drop us a comment, we would love to hear from you.