#google reader

Diet Crystal Pepsi. Frito Lay Lemonade. Watermelon-flavored Oreos. Through the years, the shelves of stores have been filled with products that turned out to be flops, failures, duds, and losers. But only briefly filled with them, of course, because products like these tend to get yanked from stores quickly, leaving most consumers to wonder: Who exactly buys these things, anyway? Now a published study co-authored by two MIT professors answers that question. Amazingly, the same group of consumers has an outsized tendency to purchase all kinds of failed products, time after time, flop after flop, Diet Crystal Pepsi after Diet Crystal Pepsi. The study calls the people in this group “harbingers of failure” and suggests they provide a new window into consumer behavior. “These harbingers of failure have the unusual property that they keep on buying products that are taken from the shelves,” says MIT marketing professor Catherine Tucker, co-author of a paper detailing the study’s results. Significantly, Tucker adds, these star-crossed consumers can sniff out flop-worthy products of all kinds. “This is a cross-category effect,” Tucker explains. “If you’re the kind of person who bought something that really didn’t resonate with the market, say, coffee-flavored Coca-Cola, then that also means you’re more likely to buy a type of toothpaste or laundry detergent that fails to resonate with the market.”

Con su desaparición dejamos atrás un mundo donde elegíamos nuestras fuentes, leíamos en orden cronológico y construíamos un feed propio, sin algoritmos empujándonos hacia la indignación.

Google Reader representaba un Internet más libre, más humano, más nuestro. Su muerte abrió paso a la era del scroll infinito, donde las plataformas deciden qué vemos y cuándo lo vemos.

A veces vale la pena recordarlo para entender cómo llegamos hasta aquí.

An Internet where expression exists — but only within permitted enclosures. Where art, speech, community, and identity still technically happen, but always under the watchful eye of monetization risk. Where platforms encourage you to be “authentic” while quietly penalizing anything too real, too raw, or too noncommercial.

Where racists and scammers, bots and trolls can fly by night under fake photo scans and temporary appearance of compliance, while sowing rot from the inside out, but the business model already shifted to helping the rot grow because that's where the sun is shining in the quarterly reports..

Tentacular… It’s not dead. It’s not hollow. It’s Blighted, rotting under the weight of the parasite that's infested its network of wire with its own tendrils dripping bias and hate, ignorant over-reaction or poorly-fitting incompatible dream.

Held hostage by ad revenue, payment processors, investor pressure, and legal panic. Every platform wants to be the space where culture happens — but none want to take responsibility for what that culture says, or who it threatens, how it refuses to behave or what fluid masses of hate it will enable.

So they extract. They monetize. They whisper about “creator empowerment” while building systems that nerf reach, demonetize nuance, and algorithmically quarantine risk. Not because they hate users — but because they fear becoming liable for them.

This is cowardice at scale. More than just censorship from governments. More than mobs with pitchforks. Self-inflicted restrictions from billion-dollar companies scared of looking like publishers, scared of lawsuits, scared of regulators — and more than anything, scared of the advertisers who believe their false promises of impressions, when 90%+ of those are siphoned (far beyond the original half advertisers already know they lose).

Users create value for free

Platforms monetize without liability

Advertisers fund only what flatters them

Payments enforce moral compliance at the financial layer

As we mourn the impending loss of #Jamboard, here's a quick look at all the other tools in the Google Graveyard.