Google API News

[Alex Chaffee]

Our man on the inside, Mihai, has posted some interesting news to the
Friends Of Google Reader API mailing list. It's a bit technical but
here's the gist, in the form of "A" from me and "M" from him:

M: We've severed the Reader/Buzz dependency, which means that shares
and comments should keep working even after Buzz goes read-only.

A: So the Google Reader UI still won't have a share button, but other
apps can use the API to share and unshare using the broadcast tag like
before?

M: Yes.

A: Likewise, the Google Reader app won't show comments or allow people
to add them, but comments will be available for API clients?

M: Yes.

(via https://groups.google.com/d/msg/fougrapi/sKclYEY7XsY/CAm6R07PNPQJ )

So it looks like the API and the Reader app truly are different
projects inside Google. (This fits the history -- reportedly Google
Reader was conceived as a proof-of-concept app showing what you could
do on top of a news feed backend API.)

As I see it, this changes the landscape a little bit for those of us
trying to get back sharing and commenting inside Google Reader. We
don't have to scramble to send shared items to an outside-served feed.

.. although there's nothing wrong with that instead of or in addition
to doing it in the Reader backend too, but it's not preferred, since
it's hard technically to get all the stuff back into the outside
feeds, to wit:

* the original source and author
* the sharer
* the full text of the original item

Maybe it'll be possible to get an outside feed with that stuff in it
but so far I haven't seen a userscript that actually does that. All
the "Share" buttons I've seen -- including Google's newish "G+ Share"
button that appears in the under-item button bar isn't really Share,
but Send To.

I know this is confusing but I'm confused too, and looking for guidance.

To that end, please see my next post about Send To Sharebro.

--
Alex Chaffee - al...@stinky.com
http://alexchaffee.com
http://twitter.com/alexch

[Sanjeev Satheesh]

Hey Alex,

That's great news. Apparently, "our man on the inside" is the founding member of the google reader team!

I see that you have pushed the code that makes send_to broadcast that feed item. Please excuse my n00b questions:

I was thinking of fetching the feed given the url (in the Hello! chain) Looks like your latest commit does that and adds it to the user's broadcasts. So is the send_to ready as an api? That is can we start diverting lipsumarium users' shares back to their google stream? Do we need a userscript for that? Or just simply, how do I try out the send_to now?

Thanks!
Sanjeev

[Mike Whybark]

alex (and mihai, assume): great news!

--
Mike Whybark - mwhy...@gmail.com

[Emmanuel Pire]

I know I'm probably being pessimistic but I'm more confused than happy.

Please repeat this at least 2 times in your head:

Google chased us from using reader share in favor of their new shiny toy: G+. Now we are going to use everything just like before, using their resources. They will continue to support us.

You could say it twice ? Really ?

sorry but I don't buy it.

Still, using it for the time it will last is still something good. But I'd do it in another way that prevent us to go down if (when) the reader api will go down for good: we subscribe to sharebro.org feed, not served from google. (we keep the control). But, as long as we can use the reader api, we copy the shared items from the google broadcast feed. this way:

- we have all the control, they can't shut us down.

- we can still use the reader API to share

- we can also use our api.

what do you think ?

--
Emmanuel Pire
Web development
http://lipsumarium.com/

[Juan Luis Chulilla]

If I am going to invest my time and energy, I need to feel reasonably sure that activity is going to continue. After the first double fiasco, it's quite hard to trust reader again

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[Alex Chaffee]

> But, as long as we can use the reader api, we copy the shared items from the google broadcast feed.

Good plan. Keep a copy in the background for later -- just in case.
It's on the list.

On Tue, Nov 22, 2011 at 2:11 AM, Juan Luis Chulilla <chul...@gmail.com> wrote:
> If I am going to invest my time and energy, I need to feel reasonably sure
> that activity is going to continue. After the first double fiasco, it's
> quite hard to trust reader again

Yes, Google totally blew it. But Google is not a monolith. There are a
lot of individual people who work there, and decisions usually get
made in a *very* decentralized way, and people *really do* want to do
the right thing.

I honestly think this was a case of a few people -- Google Reader
Product Managers -- making a really bad decision based on pressure
from New CEO Larry Page, then not communicating either with the users
or the old Reader developers -- in part because many (most?) of those
people have already left the company -- about how their decision would
affect things.

In fact I think there were *three* directives:

1. integrate Reader with Plus somehow (which they could have done with
a "Send To G+" or "Share On G+" button that works *exactly* like the
one they rolled out a few weeks ago)

2. change Reader to use the New Style Guide (which has too much
whitespace and the icons are all chunky and gray and look the same and
the main "do this" button is colored red which means "don't do this"
-- yeah, that's a totally different bad decision)

3. "PLUS PLUS PLUS PLUS PLUS PLUS PLUS PLUS" -- this is New CEO Larry
Page whose pet project is dominating the company -- just check how his
shareholder earnings remarks is 80% about Plus -- and also "simplify
and streamline".
https://plus.google.com/106189723444098348646/posts/EanXz8fLwDh

None of this *excuses* them for ripping apart our communities so
casually and callously. None of this *rebuilds* the trust they lost.

But it does *explain* why I'm willing to keep using their product and
API, at least for the time being.

> After the first double fiasco, it's
> quite hard to trust reader again

What's the 'double' part?

[Juan Luis Chulilla]

Buzz. Some of the sharers preferred to comment on Buzz the contents selected on reader. It was plain stupid to push people off buzz in a so rude way to force them use page's toy. Actually you can use it yet, but without reader sharing and with the menace of closure, the effect is the same

[Miguel A. Arévalo]

Maybe it's just wishfull thinking but I think Google is going to do "The Right Thing" in the end. I think that the "Google Reader Fiasco" is just an over-reaction to the Plus push from the part of the Product Manager.

Why? I'm a big user of PicasaWeb and it has shocked me how the Plusification of Picasa has been different from the one on Reader. We can share on G+ from PicasaWeb, but we can follow users also without Google+, we can comment on PicasaWeb... and the comments appear on G+ and the other way round... PicasaWeb is just a view of what's in Google+ Photos.

And also we have the doubts on the API and code that Mihai said and services still running, the changes to Google Reader seems rushed, and still in progress (they have just added the option to change the interface density).

So I think everything is now open.

I don't mind having my shares on Google+, or migrating my friends to Circles, but I'm not interested on the social life of my "followed", I just want their shares... on my Reader interface...

[Saliency]

@miguel

Yep agree.  That would have been the smart implementation...  I'm not as convinced as you are about Google doing the right thing in the end though.  I think Picasa has more users that they don't want to anger.  I don't think Google values the Reader users.

[Galina_Ovt]

I would also favor keeping a copy of the shared items from the Google broadcast feed.