Goodbye Google Reader

Google Reader had been my reading outlet for as long as I could remember. Since Google announced the end of life for Google Reader, I believe many were in disbelief (I did!) and probably a bit panicky, thinking about the amount of RSS subscriptions (blogs links) in the Google reader that we have as part of our collections over the years. RSS is one of the greatest Web tool that helps me a lot to get my reading sources every day. Finding a replacement for Google Reader was not easy at first. Mainly due to my hesitation to move away from something that I used to for so long.

There are not many alternatives to Google Reader (for now) too and I found only two best replacements: Feedly and The Old Reader. I have looked into both in term of functions and usability before I decided to use Feedly for good. What I like best about Feedly is its easiness to have all my subscriptions transferred automatically when I sign in with my Google Account while The Old Reader requires you to import the OML from Google Reader. It’s not very hard to do the latter actually and there is a good site to tell you more here.

The Old Reader is said to be better and makes you feel comfortable because the design is very similar to Google Reader. Yet, I didn’t choose it because Feedly has better integration with Mozilla Firefox and there’s mobile apps too (of course, I’m a sucker for mobile apps!).

You really can get many options for different platforms from Feedly.

Simply allowing access to my Google Account to transfer all my subscriptions. No hassle of exporting and importing OML.

A small green button near the address bar (only for Firefox) for easy access to Feedly and my subscriptions with just one click. That’s my favorite function.

If you would like to try out Feedly too, here is a guide telling you how to migrate from Google Reader to Feedly. If you have better alternatives as replacement to Google Reader, I would love to hear from you. I don’t believe there’s an ultimate replacement but knowing more alternatives sure doesn’t hurt, right?