I have mixed feelings about the Google Reader. One good thing is that Google has entered the RSS space. If they entered it with an amazing product it would threaten smaller players like Rojo, Bloglines, and NewsGator. With their current product it seems they’ll attract users who aren’t familiar with RSS at which point they might become addicted and upgrade to better and more feature-rich products.
They should have just bought Rojo! :-)
That said, (and I hate to give bad reviews) I’m not too impressed. I don’t like the UI. They have a fixed layout and key bindings don’t work. They basically built an iframe-style sidebar without any of the benefits of iframes (scroll bars, key bindings, etc). Sometimes AJAX is a bad thing.
There are also a number of technical problems. It doesn’t support auto-discovery. I can’t imagine anyone releasing a product in 2005 and not having auto-discovery. Bad form.
OPML import also seems pretty flaky. When I tried to import my feeds it freaked out and bailed without any error message. Then I could click on “subscriptions” but the UI was less than ideal. Not a good first user experience.
The ultimate sin though is that they don’t support OPML export. Really bad idea. Right now they’re a roach motel. You can check in but you can’t check out. I’ll pass. Hopefully they’ll fix this soon.
The UI problems might be a false negative. It might be just a personal thing. I wonder what other people think of the UI. I love the Yahoo Beta UI which makes the gmail look primitive in comparison but a lot of people replied to my blog post noting that they hated the Outlook-style interface. Fair enough. UI can tend to be a situated software issue and a personal decision.
I hate giving Google Reader a negative review though. I really like the Google guys including Jason, Goldman, and the whole Blogger and Blog Search team. Hopefully they won’t hate me and still talk to me the next time they see me. I hope they take this as constructive criticism. :-).
Update:
The more I think about it the more I might have been too harsh on Google. The problem here is that they’re not managing expectations. My “beta” of TailRank is a lot buggier and raw that Google Reader but at least I communicate this fact. If Google is just trying to release early/release often this should be celebrated. The problem though is that everything from Google is a beta (including Google News). I just don’t know what to expect. How long will Google Reader be beta? Are they reving it often?
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Trackback on Oct 8th, 2005 at 2:33 pm
Google This, Google That, Google, Google, Google!
The talk is all about google but there is a problem we do not agree on if they are going about it the right or wrong way.
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October 8, 2005 at 2:30 pm
Honestly your assessment of gReader is not to harsh. I for one think it could have been a bit harder on Google. In your update to this post I wonder the same about the reving.
October 8, 2005 at 7:58 pm
While not perfect, I think the google reader UI gives an idea of how rojo could be greatly improved. Of course no one will listen to me, but rojo could be greatly improved by adapting a more google reader like interface. Why? Because the current set up with rojo does not encourage in place reading of the stories. The expand triangle is tiny and I would bet most people that use rojo probably launch the story into a new tab going directly to the site by clicking on the title of the story like I do. With the google reader interface I actually feel like reading the story in place, on the google reader web site. This makes it WAY, WAY, more likely that I will actually use the flagging or sharing features because I don’t have to switch back to do it.
So rojo should drop that wasted left gutter space and put the story titles out there like google reader does. Encourage readers to read stories in place so that the peer features of flagging and sharing are right there within easy reach.
October 9, 2005 at 2:17 am
I’m not sure if I like the UI or not yet.
You can do OPML export, though – Go to “Your Subscriptions”, then in the “More Actions” select list there is an “Export” action.
The URL is http://www.google.com/reader/subscriptions/export (I assume that will only work if you are logged in)