12 Jan
2011
I like Google and always have (as much as you can say that about a brand). I really don't think it's as scary as some people think and I think that my life and work is simplified and enriched by its existence.
However, do you sometimes get the feeling that Google launches something great and then fails to keep up with its development? Google Wave seemed like a great idea, but it withered on the vine until it was unceremoniously dumped. I always felt that its potential was lost in its complexity, and no one was able to present it without disappearing into the wonder of Google geekiness. Docs, Reader and Gmail are all super, but don't seem to get much attention now that Chrome and Android are top of the pops. Maybe that's the price to pay for developing applications and services for which the end-user (apparently) pays no real money.
The web has been buzzing recently about the imminent demise or not of RSS. I like RSS too, and Google Reader and Feedly, but here's an illustration from Google's own FAQ about Google Reader: 15. What are Google Reader's system requirements? For the best user experience, Google Reader requires an up-to-date browser. We recommend that you use Firefox (download: Windows Mac Linux) or Safari (download: Mac), but Internet Explorer will work too (download: Windows).
It was clearly written before the launch of Google's own web browser, Chrome, and even before Safari was available for Windows.
However, my point is that Google has not updated this documentation for that long (Safari 3, the Windows compatible version was launched in June 2007 and Chrome was launched a little over a year later). If this documentation has been checked, no one has done anything about it, but I suspect that it has simply not been checked by anybody who cares about the basics of Google Reader these days. Sad.
