Google has again reminded us they are in charge, not us. They can cancel any product they want, no matter how many users they have. Last night, they announced the demise of Google Reader…and stopped the sale of all products in their Play store that block ads.
Google Reader is used by millions of people, including me, to gather news and information from the Internet and aggregate it all in one place. I mainly use to gather information and stories for this blog. Currently I have 113 sites feeding their latest stories to my Google Reader…and I go through most of them. It’s very important to many folks besides me. No matter, Google says it’s going and there is nothing we can do about it. Personally, I am already investigating a replacement. All of us have until June 30 to figure out alternatives.
As for the ad-blockers, such great programs as Ad Blocker, AdBlock Plus, AdAway and AdFree are no longer available in the Google Play store…meaning you can no longer block ads displayed in Google products such as the Chrome Browser or Android apps. Google says the apps are in violation of their terms of service…meaning developers can’t interfere with other’s services.
My plan from this point off is to start limiting my use of Google products…not because I am angry at them (well maybe a little), but because they cannot be trusted. For instance, I will be discontinuing Google Drive as I cannot trust them with my data ( I will use BOX instead…they recently gave me 50GB of free storage). I seldom use the Chrome Browser and am thinking now of using something else…even though my ad blockers still work…I think. I’ve never been crazy about Chrome anyway.
There are alternatives to most of Google products, and I will check them out. I will still use Google Search, of course, because it is the best of the search engines…and they won’t discontinue it as it is their big cash cow.
But, today’s events reminds us we must be careful of the apps we use on the Net, because they could be yanked tomorrow. Always have a backup plan.
There is some good information on-tap today…including part 4 of the series on home networking…so let us get to it! -JRC
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