More proof that RSS is on its way out, and the apocalypse is nigh: Google has seemingly replaced the top link to its RSS reader product, Google Reader, with a link to ‘Photos’ (Picasa) at the top of the Gmail web interface. To be clear, the link is still there, it’s just hidden behind the ‘More ▼’ link now.
Boy, that place has really started falling apart since Larry Page took over as CEO.
Sure, it’s a minor UI change, but that isn’t stopping users from going nuts about it on Twitter.
A couple of choice tweets:
Another user posits: “Where the F**k is my link to Google Reader in Gmail?!??! I’m sure they can see in Analytics that I use it every single day…”
And therein lies the problem, I think. You can customize Gmail to a degree, and – particularly for a free product – that’s really awesome, but you can’t yet change the order of the top menu items – and that’s what’s getting users riled up.
Maybe Google will listen to this vocal subset of users, maybe they won’t. But I think it may be better if we don’t wait to see what happens, and instead a TechCrunch-reading developer immediately starts coding a browser extension that puts the damn ‘Reader’ link back. Go!
Google Reader is an RSS aggregator released from Google Labs in late 2005. The service is capable of reading Atom and RSS feeds online or offline. The service was in beta until September 17, 2007.
Gmail, also known as Google Mail, is a free email service provided by Google which has innovative features such as “conversation view” email threads, search-oriented interface, and plenty of free storage (almost 7.7GB). Gmail opened in private beta mode in April 2004 by invitation only. At first, invites were hard to come by and were spotted up for sale on auction sites like eBay. The email service is now open to everyone and is part of Google Apps. ...
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