Google Reader has always been an useful tool for a number of users, but since Google had announced that it would be adding the Google+ element to the Google product, the wait seemed long for many to note the new design. But its a shocker to note the reviews of the product, as it received a big redesign recently. Strangely, not many people have been happy with the redesign.
Redesigning a product or service, of late has not worked for the giants in the tech world. Facebook is a classic example for the same, wherein the users preferred not to look at the positives and kept posting negative points of the redesign.
In case of Google, the users should not be surprised, as Google is working on every possible effort to promote Google+, its social networking baby. This is just one of the many efforts which have been revealed. In the future, many such services might be redesigned by Google to integrate Google+. The users even might get used to it.
Google’s commitment to Google+ seems to be deep, and one cannot assume Google+ to be like Google Buzz or Google Wave, which were gone with the wind. Google+ is here to stay. In short, Google plans to expand its base, as Google+ is just an extension of Google. Moreover, turning Google+ on for its products, it would kill the reach of its competitors significantly. For example, if a consumer likes something he/she has read via Google Reader, they would like to share it and if they find a ‘+1’ near by, most of the readers would ‘+1’ it.
Google would need the support of its employees and ex-employees to help the integration grow. However, Brian Shih, a former product manager for Google Reader, who left Google in July, was in no support of the redesign as he wrote a rather scathing post about it. Calling it a “disaster”, he said:
In the name of visual consistency, Google has updated the visual style to match Gmail, Calendar and Docs. I have nothing against visual consistency (and in fact, this something that Google should be doing), but it’s as if whoever made the update did so without ever actually using the product to, you know, read something.
…
Reader is a product built to consume information, quickly. We designed it to be very good at that one thing. G+ is an experience built around browsing (similar to Facebook) and socializing. Taking the UI paradigm for G+ and mashing it onto Reader without any apparent regard for the underlying function is awful and it shows.
…
Reader is a product built to consume information, quickly. We designed it to be very good at that one thing. G+ is an experience built around browsing (similar to Facebook) and socializing. Taking the UI paradigm for G+ and mashing it onto Reader without any apparent regard for the underlying function is awful and it shows.
It was not all, as he even criticized the color scheme, along with the new sharing functionality, stating that it would not be harder to share.
A few reactions of Google Reader users on Twitter can be viewed here, which were noted by Twitterverse.