Google today announced that they’re retiring Google Reader, as of July 1st this year, as part of their spring cleaning. While the reason given for the closure is that “over the years usage has declined”, this move leaves the (few?) die-hard Google Reader users out in the cold. So, where can we go from here?

As a fairly heavy Reader user (Since April 15, 2009 I have read a total of 80,084 items), Reader had become central to my web browsing habits. The keys features, for me, that Reader provided were:

• Handling many hundreds of feeds
• Syncing read status across multiple clients
• Supporting grouping of multiple feeds into categories

So keeping these in mind, I’ve found the following potential alternatives.

• Feedly – supports iOS, Android, Chrome and Firefox.
• NewsBlur – web, iOS and Android. Free accounts can have up to 64 feeds, but the $1/month account allows unlimited.
• The Old Reader – claims to be “just like the old google reader, only better”. Web based.
• Tiny Tiny RSS (github) – FOSS, host-it-yourself web service, with a paid Android client.

Note that, at the time of writing, most of these services have been rendered unavailable under the load of Google Reader’s “declining” user base.

So for now, I’m trialling an installation of Tiny Tiny RSS on my VPS and I am immensely happy with it. It’s fast, featureful, easy to use, and meets all of my requirements. But the best thing about it: no one else can suddenly shut it down on me. So long, Reader, and thanks for all the links.