It was a fairly popular RSS web app that provided a way to follow website feeds. The question now: Is Google Reader coming back?Īs a refresher, Google Reader was depreciated (a nicer way to say killed in software words) back in 2013. Dinsan reports that the Side Panel in both the Chrome browser and ChromeOS is getting a “Feed” option. So if you’re that one guy using Google+, don’t fret.I’ve been digging deeper into RSS lately, so this article from Chrome Story is rather timely. But Google’s efforts to deeply integrate its products into Google+ shows that it is heavily invested in making it work. Sure, it’s a ghost town-in fact, according to BuzzFeed, the supposedly declining Google Reader drove more traffic across the Web than Google+. And then there’s Google+, the search company’s beleaguered social network.

Similarly, the free version of Google’s online productivity software, Docs, doesn’t make much money on its own, but it’s crucial to Google’s Chromebook project, so it’s probably OK. So there’s no risk Google will kill Gmail. Gmail displays ads alongside your email, but its real value to Google is the way it pushes you to stay logged in to your Google account, allowing the company to learn more about your travels across the Web (and, thus, feeds into its ad revenue). Chrome is pretty safe, too, as it boosts traffic to the rest of Google’s menagerie of products. Search is Google’s main moneymaker, so there’s no risk there. There are many free Google products that you can use without worrying they’ll go away. This calculus becomes especially difficult with software made by Google, a company that doesn’t charge for much of anything, isn’t transparent about how its products make money, and is fond of experimenting with lots and lots of new products (and, lately, of killing off stuff that’s not part of its central mission).

Gmail rss feed reader