Monday marked the official end of Google Reader. The announcement back in March seems like an eternity ago, and many of us have long since moved on to alternatives for our RSS news consumption habits.
Google took its war on RSS one step further on Monday, however, killing the RSS option in Google Alerts as well. If you were subscribed to RSS alerts, you might have seen a message in whatever reader you’re using these days, informing you of the change. Google’s solution for those using them, was simply to start using its email alerts.
Sigh.
I can’t speak for all Google Reader/RSS users, but RSS alerts have long been an important part of how I find information on the web pertaining to specific topics. It’s always been a more attractive option to me than email, because I don’t really want my email inbox cluttered up with all of these alerts (I’ve been subscribed to quite a few). I had them all organized to go into specific folders in Google Reader (now Feedly), so they came up where relevant. Now, those of us who do this are going to have to rethink our entire Alerts strategy.
It’s not the end of the world. We’ll move on, just as we’re moving on from Google Reader, but damn is in inconvenient at the moment.
It looks like email as an alternative to RSS does apply in some cases.
At least Google didn’t entirely kill Google Alerts as we were worried they might. At least not yet. It seems like there’s always room in the Google Graveyard.
Yahoo, by the way, also just killed its RSS alerts, though it did get new search alerts for web, images and video to go along with news, fantasy sports, horoscopes, stocks, travel destinations and weather.
image via: http://nooooooooooooooo.com/