As I looked onto the task of writing ‘the first post’ for TechnoHash, it was actually not too tough for me to find the right one, with the all-time best feed-reading solution departing us on July 1, 2013.

Google Reader had been the favorite feed reader for many, including myself, serving as a professional solution with a nifty toolset and a clean interface. In an official blog post about 3 months ago, Google announced that it would be retiring Google Reader on July 1, 2013. The announcement created a havoc as ardent fans of the service were left in a paradoxical dilemma.

For many, Google Reader had not been just a service to keep track of favorite websites, but also part of a daily routine, as the service helped keep tab on almost everything that happened around us; from updates and reviews to the latest breaking news, under one roof. Though many techies predicted the death of RSS quite a long time ago, Google Reader has had a big hand in keeping it more than active for all these years.

The two simple reasons, as Google put it, for the powering down of Google Reader had been the decline of usage of the service (which looked contradictory to the general assumption) and the plan of Google to pour out its resources to a lesser number of products.

Existing feed-serving solutions like Feedly and Flipboard started taking advantage of the announcement, while many others like Digg and AOL stepped in with announcements of new feed readers, and hundreds of blogs started comparing Google Reader alternatives.

It will take time to come to a final conclusion as to who can take the throne of Google Reader, though Feedly seems to have an upper hand as of now. Anyway, it’s time to bid Google Reader a happy retired life!

Goodbye Google Reader!