...we stopped the singing.

This may be irony:

No More Google Reader
from Google Operating System by Alex Chitu
via What's Hot in Google Reader

but the topic at hand remains serious. This is a stark reminder of why it's important to be able to get your data out of cloud services at a moment's notice and why you should always keep local backups of important data. Thankfully, Google is quite fair about this, as opposed to a lot of other large players.

(As a side note, export of full data should be doable, but come with another layer of security like a grace period, password confirmation, verification email, or other means. Imagine someone gains temporary access to your account and exports all your digital life at once. And yes, I know how that relates to IMAP.)

Google Reader has felt like a second class citizen for quite some time now, the removal of features to push Google+ and the slow updates for Android were two signs that didn't forebode well (Vim's spelling correction does not know "forbode", how weird is that)(turns out I'm simply stupid, see comments; thanks Jim). I can see how this move may make sense from Google's POV even though I am sad to see an old companion go.

Anyway, the stats page of two of my accounts show how sadly I will miss Google Reader in two simple lines:

Since January 24, 2010 you have read a total of 59,253 items.
Since February 20, 2011 you have read a total of 215,285 items.

Farewell, my friend.

PS: Maybe those petitions will sway them, but I won't get my hopes up.

PS: Speaking of Google, I found this gem today; TMI.