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0 pointswombat-man2y ago0 comments

I think it just was never going to get the mass adoption it needed to justify the upkeep.

0 comments

The upkeep was apparently 12 engineers and they had tens of millions of users. It doesn't take that many users to justify 12 engineers plus infra, so it sounds like it was more that Google doesn't care to operate any product unless it will have users in the hundreds of millions.

mike_hearn2y ago

By the end it had an upkeep of one dude's 20% time. It was very reliable and the Google infrastructure didn't require much ongoing maintenance at that time, the servers just kept on trucking.

dylan6042y ago

It doesn't take that many <revenue generating> users to justify 12 engineers plus infra,

Otherwise, those 12 engineers and infra are pure negative on the balance sheet

LamaOfRuin2y ago

Having basically all their users (well, as much as for any of their revenue generating products anyway) be revenue generating would require practically no effort for google specifically. It fit their revenue model perfectly. It is trivial to put the exact same ads in there as they already had on search and gmail, and it is stickier than search or gmail.

pests2y ago

That would seem a little rude wouldn't it?

Taking content from another site, maybe that has ads, and then displaying it in Reader next to your own ads instead?

I think it would have caused some issues in the RSS world that such a big player was using everyone's content for themselves.

I used Reader daily back then. It's strange to think my current method of manually checking sites for updates was solved so long ago.

1 more reply

wombat-manOP2y ago

Broadly, I think some business models are better suited for smaller companies than Google for sure.

Reader probably didn't have much B2B potential and was maybe profitable but yeah, they tend to swing for larger audiences.

wombat-manOP2y ago

I don't think they ever put ads on it, really wonder what the decision process on that was.

mike_hearn2y ago

Many blogs have ads on them. So you'd be stripping ads and replacing them with your own - not cool.

wombat-manOP2y ago

Well, sure, but they could just not show ads for blogs that didn't use google ads.

The ones that do... Well, why not show ads for them as originally intended?

j / k navigate · click thread line to collapse

0 comments

lolinder2y ago

mike_hearn2y ago

By the end it had an upkeep of one dude's 20% time. It was very reliable and the Google infrastructure didn't require much ongoing maintenance at that time, the servers just kept on trucking.

dylan6042y ago

It doesn't take that many <revenue generating> users to justify 12 engineers plus infra,

Otherwise, those 12 engineers and infra are pure negative on the balance sheet

LamaOfRuin2y ago

pests2y ago

That would seem a little rude wouldn't it?

Taking content from another site, maybe that has ads, and then displaying it in Reader next to your own ads instead?

I think it would have caused some issues in the RSS world that such a big player was using everyone's content for themselves.

I used Reader daily back then. It's strange to think my current method of manually checking sites for updates was solved so long ago.

1 more reply

wombat-manOP2y ago

Broadly, I think some business models are better suited for smaller companies than Google for sure.

Reader probably didn't have much B2B potential and was maybe profitable but yeah, they tend to swing for larger audiences.

wombat-manOP2y ago

I don't think they ever put ads on it, really wonder what the decision process on that was.

mike_hearn2y ago

Many blogs have ads on them. So you'd be stripping ads and replacing them with your own - not cool.

wombat-manOP2y ago

Well, sure, but they could just not show ads for blogs that didn't use google ads.

The ones that do... Well, why not show ads for them as originally intended?

j / k navigate · click thread line to collapse