Shooting at Bubbles

Don’t get me wrong. I have the utmost respect for Louis and even though I have never met him face to face, and mostly never will, I like to think of him as a friend.

That said.

Louis are you off your frikken meds man? Stand-alone feed readers collapsing? C’mon give me a break here bud.

Just because you’ve swallowed the Google kool-aid full tilt doesn’t mean that stand-alone feed readers are passé or that they are – or ever will for a very long time – go away.

In his post Louis points to the fact that NewsGator shut down it’s own web-based feed reader and synchronization service in favor of using Google’s GReader sync services. Far from being a sign that NewsGator’s RSS offering like FeedDemon are going to disappear it more of a sign of a very smart business move on NewsGator’s behalf.

After all why incur the costs of maintaining a syncing services and all that it entails when you can make use of the same type of service from one of the biggest companies on the web – especially when that access is free of charge. Hell I still remember asking Nick Bradbury, author of FeedDemon, if his app would ever support GReader Shared Items back when he was starting work on version 3.

Obviously he saw the sense of doing this just as did NewsGator as company but that doesn’t mean that he sign the death warrant for FeedDemon just because he started including support for Google Reader. If anything he has added value to the program making it even more of a valuable tool in my day to day work.

As well he points to a number of web based services like Shyfter, Bloglines, and Assestbar that were once all the talk of RSS but have since either closed down or gone into hiding to revamp. The impression Louis gives us is that this is all because of the overwhelming power of Google Reader and their conquering of the RSS battlefield.

While some are debating RSS’ role in a new world of real-time information discovery, there is no question that Google Reader has won this specific battle. If I exclude FriendFeed data from my own FeedBurner statistics, the combination of Google Reader and iGoogle accounts for 84 percent of all my RSS readers. In contrast, NewsGator is below 4 percent, and BlogLines checks in at just above 2 percent, with PostRank and Netvibes coming in at just over 1 percent each. Mice nuts.

Mice nuts indeed Louis because the fact is that this is your usage – not mine, not a lot of people who regularly get the newest version of FeedDemon – or other desktop RSS clients – or who are more than willing to return to paying for it. The world as much as people like Louis love nothing better than to tout the powers of web based services like Google Reader but not everyone is drinking prom that same pitcher of kool-aid.

Louis ends his post with the suggestion that the RSS client war is over and that Google has won

The onetime debate about whether Google Reader is number one or not is pretty much gone, and Newsgator’s turning off their online synching essentially throws in the towel. The once promising Feedeachother.com has turned off its lights. Shyftr and Assetbar aren’t coming back. A new entrant called Fever is interesting, but looks more like My6sense than a traditional client. RSS is powering aggregation sites like FriendFeed, which in theory, provides 30 to 40 percent of my feed reader count, but when it comes to stand alone, all must stand in awe of Google Reader, for to do battle is futile.

Excuse me while a gag here. The fact that these companies, and probably hundreds just like them, have either closed their doors or are re-evaluating their offerings doesn’t mean by any stretch of the imagination that Google is responsible for their demise. The fact is that this is happening for a wide variety of reasons – everything from shitty ill-conceived products to not being able to get traction in an extremely crowed field – one that still to this day is getting more crowded.

I don’t use Google Reader because I don’t like it. Period. Sure there are things like their sync and Shared Items that have become a standard but that doesn’t mean that I am going to use a product I just don’t like. Especially when you have excellent developers like Nick Bradbury, FeedDemon, and Brent Simmons, NetNewsWire, who are doing their best to make their feed readers at the forefront.

As Ian Betteridge from Technovia said in a post about this

[…] In fact, I’ve just gone down the opposite route – from using Google Reader as a web app to using NetNewsWire synced with Google Reader. The web app is now my “lowest common denominator” application, for when I don’t have access to my Mac.

Why? Because NNW integrates with other great services which aren’t from Google. Google Reader shared items is a mess – NNW lets me post direct to Delicious (or even better, via Pukka). I’m one click away from adding any item to Instapaper, which I can then sync to my iPhone.

In other words, I don’t have to live and breathe the Google ecosystem – I can pick the best applications to suit me, not the ones which Google wants me to use.

Google is not the answer for everything. Desktop apps are not the answer for everything. Either way though to claim that a whole segment of those apps will disappear, or aren’t important anymore, just because of something that Google does is being facetious – and wrong.

Sorry buddy but you are way out in left field on this one.