Google Reader is gone (yawn)

As of today, Google Reader is gone. (Correction: It goes away at the end of today. You still have time to export your feed list.) When its termination was announced, some writers declared it meant the end of RSS feeds. From what I’m seeing today, the attempts at panic have died away, replaced by a realization that RSS and Atom are well-understood feed formats and that lots of alternatives exist. Tristan Louis writes for Forbes:

While the death of the most popular RSS reader on the internet could have been seen as something that would represent a grave danger for RSS as a standard, for openness as a concept, and for heavy news consumption, the inverse has been true, as it only solidified RSS’ position in the world as the format for news delivery. Reader was a good product but one can hardly call it a great product and its demise will help rectify some imbalances it created in the market.

Hopefully dedicated users backed up their feed collections as an OPML file. If not, all they have to do is start collecting feed URLs again.

There’s no need to use a website at all to manage your feeds. On my iPod, I use Free RSS Reader, a simple, straightforward reader, though unfortunately it’s no longer being updated. On my main computer I use Sage, a Firefox extension.

A few columnists got a temporary boost in readership and a long-term loss in credibility by proclaiming the demise of RSS. The rest of us are still fine.