As we had expected, Google has officially turned the lights off for Reader. The service went offline around midnight, however there is a bit of good news for those who may have been slacking in terms of downloading your data. Google will have all of your subscription data available until the middle of July.
Specifically, Google has said the Reader subscription data will be available until until 12PM PST July 15, 2013. The Reader data includes your subscriptions along with lists of people you follow, items you have starred, notes that you have created and more. Of course, we suspect most will be interested only in the subscription list.
The data is available by way of Google Takeout and just to drive this point home, you will only have access to grab that data until July 15th. In fact, Google has made it quite clear that it will be deleted afterward. In what is likely to be the final posting on the Reader Blog, the team has said “all subscription data will be permanently, and irrevocably deleted” as of July 15th.
Further details mention that after July 15th Google “will not be able to recover any Google Reader subscription data for any user.” Bottom line — get your Reader data before July 15th or lose it forever. Otherwise, aside from the doom sounding get your data before the 15th bit, Google has also taken a final opportunity to thank the users.
Or perhaps more important for some, the Reader Team briefly mentioned about how they understand you may not agree with this decision and pointed users to the alternativeTo website for other options. Of course, we shared some of our alternatives in a post here on Android Community yesterday.
SOURCE: Google Reader Blog
