For eight years it was the reference point for those who used the internet to get information, but then it disappeared into thin air: now Google Reader is back and we can choose quality information
On July 1, 2013 Google unexpectedly closed one of its most beloved services: it is Google Reader, the RSS feed reader launched in 2005 and that, in its 8 years of life, became the reference service for those who wanted to stay updated with the latest news published by their favorite online newspapers. At the announcement of the closure of Google Reader, in fact, Big G has been flooded with criticism and, now, has decided to take a step back: Google Reader is back, but inside the Chrome browser.
At the moment Reader has been integrated only on the Chrome app for Android, starting from version 94 of the browser, but the Google engineer Adrienne Porter Felt who coordinates the app development team promises that the iOS version will arrive soon. No news, instead, about Google Reader integration in Chrome for PC and Mac. On Chrome for Android the section of Google Reader to read the feeds of sites is already available, but in some cases is not activated by default, so we can already use it, to select our favorite sources of information and have them always at hand. It is, among other things, an alternative to Google Discover, the news feed automatically created by Google algorithms based on the tastes of users detected by tracking navigation and online searches.
How to activate the new Google Reader
The new Google Reader is displayed every time the user opens a new tab in Chrome for Android: there are now two separate tabs, one for Discover and the other for Reader which is, however, called "Follow".
If the user doesn't see this second tab, but is sure to have the latest version of Chrome installed, then he'll have to do a little technical maneuver: he'll have to type in the address bar the string "chrome://flags/#web-feed" and press enter. This will open the page of the experimental functions of Chrome, from which the user will have to select "Enabled" for the "Web Feed" option.
At this point, every time the user wants to include a site among his favorite sources, he will just have to visit it and then open the main menu of Chrome (the one with the three vertical dots) and, at the bottom, press "Follow". From that moment on, any new article published by that site will be available in the "Follow" tab that will appear next to the Discover one, when a new page is opened on Chrome for Android.
Also Libero Tecnologia has an RSS feed, so it can be included among the preferred sources of the new Google Reader: we invite you to add us, following the procedure just described, to stay informed about the most important technology news with quality articles.
How the new Google Reader works
There are differences in the functioning between the old Google Reader and the new one, integrated in Chrome. The old one was, in essence, a chronological stream of news items that were shown in order of publication. If a newspaper or a site published a few articles a day, it was very often difficult to find them because those articles were overwhelmed by those of other sites followed.
In the new Reader, however, it is not so: for each site followed are shown only the last 3 articles published and a button "More news", then you go to the three articles of other sources. At the moment, unfortunately, it is not yet possible to change the order in which the sites are displayed in the feed: the last one we will have "followed" will be shown first.