Google Reader

Google Reader was the premier RSS reading service when it launched until it closed in 2013. Google's decision to close Reader was announced publicly as a desire to focus on fewer products, but some speculate that Google wanted to push Google+ as a way to share information. Several modern RSS readers like Feedly, The Old Reader, and Inoreader have incorporated many of the features from Google Reader that made it the most popular RSS reader for nearly a decade. These features included collapsible navigation and article views, starring favorite articles, keyboard navigation, and categorizing feeds according to their topic. Auto-read upon scrolling is now a standard feature on many RSS reader apps for both iOS and Android because it was an integral feature of the Google Reader experience. Sharing was also an integral part of the Google Reader experience from 2007 onward. Reader allowed you to make articles visible to your Google Talk contacts just by marking them as shareable. This feature received tons of criticism from users who were unhappy that the shareable link aspect of the service included no way to opt out of it. In 2011, this functionality disappeared in favor of Google's own +1 button from its Google+ service. This change is what led many users to speculate that Google wanted to focus on its social network service instead of supporting an open standard like RSS. When Google announced it was closing Google Reader, it gave users four months to export their feeds for use with a new service by using Google Takeout. Today services like Feedly, The Old Reader, and Inoreader offer the same list of features that made Google Reader the most popular RSS reader for nearly a decade.