Google Reader going down the cosmic toilet

I'm sure we can all see the irony of using Google's blogging platform to report that Google are sending Reader to the garbage can in the sky.

I must admit I'm fairly hacked off about this as, being someone who flits from machine to machine having a synced reader across all machines and platforms was incredibly useful. Reader itself was useful as a means of aggregating newsfeeds and tracking what was happening out in the big wide world.

I've been using Reader for years with the result that I'm not up on the alternatived but there are some likely looking candidates - I've tried Newswire on OS X and it certainly looks feasible.

This whole issue of course raises the general question of what happens when a 'free' service goes away. Google of course are under no obligation to continue services ad infinitum, and have both (a) given fair warning and (b) an export mechanism.

We're dependent on similar 'free' services for email, photo sharing and the rest. We tend to assume they'll be around for ever. This is clearly not the case and we always need to have a plan B in place ...