 "Google Reader founder says he wouldn't have founded the RSS service inside today's Google")
With all the hullabaloo surrounding users’ anger with Google shutting down reader, the man who invented the RSS reader has expressed his angst against the Internet giant too.
Chris Wetherell, the man behind Google Reader, said in an interview with Forbes that if the idea to build the RSS service had come to him in today’s Google, he would have simply left the company to make the product, instead of putting it at the mercy of the Google leadership.
Founding Reader in today’s Google? Hell no! (Image credit: WRC 10)
“I would absolutely not do it inside of Google,” Wetherell asserted. “I would hate that to be my idea versus Google Plus. That would be very frustrating.” The former Google employee now heads the couples-only social networking service Avocado along with ex-Google User Experience Designer Jenna Bilotta.
Wetherell’s acerbic thoughts about Google are understandable since his ultra-popular RSS service was sacrificed by the Internet giant despite users as well as industry veterans thinking the service was a Google product that was actually doing pretty well for itself.
“If you have this big idea,” Wetherell said, “It might be easier to leave the company. You might feel this. I’m not sure. But someone might feel like they should just leave the company rather than finding a way to explore it within Google and then have Google say in a couple years ‘It doesn’t matter how many millions of people are using the thing, we’ve got larger concerns.’”
Bilotta told Forbes that when she was with Google, it was a lot more open to experimentation. It worked around with products and the ones that didn’t stick were shut down. “I think the reason why people are freaking out about Reader is because that Reader did stick,” she said. “The numbers, at least until I left, were still going up.”
Google had mentioned that the reason behind shutting Reader down was that the service’s usage had declined over the years. Of course, not a lot of people bought that theory and it was rumoured that it was the cost of privacy and compliance that was actually behind the culling of the service. Richard Gingras, Senior Director, News and Social Products at Google, also put a theory out that said that Reader was dying thanks to smartphone users who were consuming news in “bits and bites”.
Reader was not the only product that was developed by a Google employee on the sidelines. Some of the most important products from the Internet giant’s stable like Gmail, Ad Sense and Google News also started off as being side projects. Wetherell says that the Google leadership should now be worried about employees not being free enough with their ideas anymore.
“It will be interesting to watch how Google communicates to its own employees about this,” Wetherell said. “If they are enticing people who are highly imaginative and creative and saying ‘Don’t worry, you can come in and you’ll find something amazing, you’ll be able to express yourself in some amazing way,’ I think that might be less straight.” Wetherell announcing his disappointment with the way his product was treated is now probably the final nail in Google Reader’s coffin.
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