Google to kill off Google Reader, Snapseed for Mac in continued service culling

Google on Wednesday announced the continuation of its "spring cleaning" that began in 2011, with the latest services to fall under the hatchet being Google Reader and the desktop version of Snapseed, among others.

In a post to the company's official blog, SVP Technical Infrastructure Urs HÃ¶lzle said that Reader's numbers have declined over the past few years, and Google will thus retire the service on July 1, 2013. Many users rely on Google Reader to aggregate the RSS feeds of their favorite websites, and there are a multitude of third-party apps already tightly integrated with the service.

According to Google, current users can export their data and subscriptions with Google Takeout over the next four months.

As for Snapseed, Google is immediately stopping sales and updates for the Mac and Windows desktop versions of the title, though existing customers can still download the software and will be offered continued support. The free Snapseed mobile apps for iOS and Android will live on.

The remaining Google services announced as reaching end-of-life:

Apps Script will be deprecating the GUI Builder and five UiApp widgets. GUI Builder will continue to be available until September 16.
CalDAV API will become available for whitelisted developers, and will be shut down for other developers on September 16.
Google Building Maker to retire on June 1.
Google Cloud Connect to retire on April 30.
Google Voice App for Blackberry ends service "next week."
Search API for Shopping to retire on on September 16.

Google's latest round of housecleaning has sparked some controversy within the online community, though the company feels it necessary to allocate resources where they are most needed.

Follow AppleInsider on Google News

31 Comments

eksodos

said about 11 years ago

hmm

eksodos

said about 11 years ago

Bah. Sorry so pissed off I posted twice by accident.

nagromme

said about 11 years ago

Great--the Google service I use the most is now being killed off! Apple: put RSS back in Safari, please, with iCloud synching. A good reminder to use services that have an actual business model--even if they cost money. I won't be jumping on many future Google experiments to see whether they last or not. (Not if they do anything important to me.)

unother

said about 11 years ago

Agreed about Reader but it's obvious that RSS is fading from importance. I did start feeling antiquated for using it a few months ago. Guess it's time to look fir something else.

Marvin

said about 11 years ago

[quote name="eksodos" url="/t/156454/google-to-kill-off-google-reader-snapseed-for-mac-in-continued-service-culling#post_2292818"]FFS.[/quote] That is exactly the phrase that I thought when reading this. Apple dropped RSS support in Safari and Mail in Mountain Lion so I checked for RRS readers and the decent ones are all based around Google Reader. It's not Google's fault of course that 3rd parties are too lazy to use the RSS feeds directly but it sucks when the plug is pulled on stuff that works. Hopefully 3rd party readers will just implement RSS properly. [quote name="unother"]it's obvious that RSS is fading from importance.[/quote] I don't think so but I do think there's an ulterior motive. With RSS, you can get your news articles concisely without adverts cluttering up the view. I browse hundreds of articles without seeing a single advert but visit the website they are on and I'm inundated with them. RSS feeds load faster too and there are notifications for updates.

Latest comparisons