For those of you who still use Google Reader, you may have noticed a change recently. Other than a borderless redesign apparently inspired by a Beatles Album cover, Google also dropped their internal share feature. That feature allowed you to see what other folks thought was interesting, as well as mark stories to share yourself. i had about five people who i followed, so when the feature got dropped, i had less interest in using the product.
i'm sure there were a lot of valid and invalid reasons for the change. i'm sure it was a pain and the market adoption rate wasn't up to expectations, so Google dropped the feature that only a small albeit vocal minority used. i'm fine with that, it's their service.
In some respects, i view it as having a free bus line that ran from my office to work. It was pleasant, ran on time, and reliable. This pas week, the bus changed, it's newer, still reliable, but the route changed and now i need to walk half a mile to get it. Honestly, the best solution would be for me to take my own car, or in this case, use my own news aggregator. That way, if it were ever to disappear, i would know who to blame and how to fix the problem.
Now, all i need to do is find the time to build it.
