There was a moment of beautiful karma a couple years ago when I was at a museum conference where the Google Cultural Institute (https://www.google.com/culturalinstitute/) team was trying to sign up partners but people kept asking how they could trust that it wouldn't turn into the next Reader and how they could get their data out or have permanent redirects when (not if) Google decided to shut the service down.
Ouch, automatic locale detection, and badly in need of a (proper) translator (for at least Dutch). And no way to switch language that I can find (wouldn't be the first time that was translated with "").
Huh ? You can change the language (I'm in France and I have my theoldreader in English).
You just need to click on your login at the top right and go to "Settings" (probably Instellingen in Dutch).
I don't get it though. Yea, it was a dick move they did not just open source the backend reader server code so people could just selfhost a replacement, but they did let you export your feeds and now we have a half dozen reasonable or good reader replacements that do the same job, and most of them copied Google's UI to attract old reader users.
It was one of the most seamless transitions besides the lack of good Android apps for a while (and Feedly's is still super slow).
I don't think that "just" is the right prefix for "open source the backend reader server code". Moving it off of Google's internal infrastructure would have been a major project.
the big white bars in desktop? I'm okay with it. when reading, it is easier when the content is compacted. if the text was full length of a browser, supposedly it is harder to read or people lose interest. Now, youtube is video, so I'm not sure whats up with their white bars but I digress.
I was Hulk Smash level angry when they pulled the plug on Reader. So much so I just went into every Google system and closed out my use. The only things I haven't been able to abandon are Gmail and Picasa. This helps me trim out one more service.
My experience with Digg reader is that it is still subpar, though better than Feedly. Specifically, I've seen it miss updates on some feeds (sometimes for days at a time), and it frequently "forgets" that I've looked at items and shows them as new again (seems to be a UI glitch). It also frequently shows feeds as having unread items but no items are actually unread (seems to be a server-side glitch, resolved by marking read in bulk).
Digg Reader is still the best I've found, but still feels like a notable step down from the reliability and consistency of Google Reader.
