Google Reader Has just recently been launched.
The Official Google Blog
Google Reader, a service we hope helps you spend more time reading what’s important to you (or is, if you’d prefer, nicely diverting). The Reader team is excited to begin iterating in public, and now that Jason Shellen’s announced it at Web 2.0 we’re excited to get your feedback on this early-stage effort.
I checked it out. I have a tenancy swoon over apps that Google puts out. Even beta versions of many apps they put out are usually way better than most commercially release software and services . But this one, while it does the job is still squarely a beta. Bloglines is still the leader in my book for o RSS Feed readers period. Granted I have yet to tryout Feed Daemon, so when I get a round to giving that a spin maybe I’ll change my mind.
Google has a virtue that it rather build than buy technology, but if you ask me they should have NEVER let this property (Bloglines) go to Ask Jeeves, or at least make them pay though the nose for it. They could have replaced Bloglines feeble blog service with that of Blogger, and would have a great platform from which to serve ads. But I digress ….
Critisms
While they try to shell out more of the AJAX (Asynchronous Javascript And XML) goodness that they achieved with their maps, gmail and personalized homepage, this one doesn’t quite make it. It is not as fast as I’m used to seeing from a Google AJAX product, though that might have something to do with me uploading ALL of my 281 feeds from Bloglines.
Thats another thing. Importing feed subscriptions is a hassle too. I can’t just give it the URL of an OPML file. I have to save the OPML file locally and upload it to Google Reader.
Organization is decent. I preserves the groups that I have set up, but it doesn’t tell me which feeds, or groups of feeds have unread content, until you select the feed.
All in all an adequate service but nothing that would make me switch readers from Bloglines as my regular reader.
Update:
Adding this the Freedbacking category
