New Google Reader, New Information Flow

Posted by Ryan on 2011-11-01

Well, as a loyal Google Reader user, I do have a great deal of complaints that I want to explode their feedback form with.

But that is something that I will do after work – now in this post, I’d like to share a few thoughts on how the new Google Reader design changes the information flow across Google’s products.

Looking at the whole Google product line:

The new Google Reader layout and the death of Google Buzz have greatly changed how information is shared on Google. The original sharing system of Google Reader is cancelled and integrated into Google+. From now on stuff you share in your Google Reader account will be published on your Google+ profile only. This cleans out the messed and overlapping information from Google Buzz, Google+ and Google Reader and combines them into one single information flow. This change makes the Google product line more clear and paves the way for the core position of Google+ of Google’s strategy of going social.

Looking at Google Reader itself:

This is kind of a disaster to Google Reader. One proof is that loyal users like me are unhappy about it. One of the most commonly seen complaint is the cancellation of the original sharing and following functions of Google Reader.

The original sharing system of Google Reader is like a smaller version of “circles” in Google+, where users of similar interests share valuable content they subcribe. Setting up and maintaining a social network is time consuming, however small it is. Cancelling this means the small sharing network a user spends months or years establishing evaporates overnight. What makes it worse, Google doesn’t seem wanting to help people transfer and rebuild the network on Google+ at all, nothing like import/export there. The information flow of Google Reader is abruptly cut.

So what is Google doing? In my opinion, Google is simply sacrificing the interests of users and their old products for the new products.

This may be a good idea in the long run, but looking at it now, I think it is rude.

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