What is Google Reader?
Google Reader was a popular RSS/Atom feed aggregator service developed by Google that allowed users to subscribe to web feeds from a variety of online sources and have new content delivered to them in one place. Launched in 2005, Google Reader helped popularize the consumption of web syndication data like blogs, news headlines and multimedia through RSS feeds.
At its peak, Google Reader had millions of dedicated users who relied on the service to consume content from thousands of sources across the web conveniently in one place. Its clean and simple interface let users easily subscribe to any site offering RSS/Atom feeds with just the click of a button.
Key features of Google Reader included:
- Ability to subscribe to unlimited number of feeds
- Keywords and folders for organizing feeds
- List and expanded views for reading feeds
- Sharing articles and feeds with contacts
- Mobile apps for Android and iOS
- Integration with other Google products like Gmail and Google+
Despite Google Reader's popularity with power users, Google decided to retire the service in 2013 to focus engineering resources on more promising products. This led to disappointment from its loyal user base. Several alternative RSS services emerged to fill the void left by Google Reader's demise.