Google Reader sunset impact on publishers

Here is an interesting insight on why the so much publicised closing down of Google Reader is probably going to affect the web as we know it. According to the blog Google Operating System post "Google Reader Data Points" the CNN RSS feed has 24 million subscribers on Google Reader. The second most subscribed feed is Engadget with 6.6 million subscribers. JoelOnSoftware has 148,000 subscribers.

As for our little Geekzone, here is our most recent stat from Feedburner (another Google service) showing we have 176,049 subscribers via Google Reader, out of 177,299.

That's 99% of our RSS subscriber base disappearing on 1st July. I imagine other blogs and news sites around the world will see a similar number.

In a single stroke Google is wiping a whole lot of information consumers from these publisher's stats.

Some might say "oh, but people can use Google+ Circles, Twitter feeds, Facebook pages, LinkedIn Groups and so on to distribute this same information around".

Sure, this could be done sure but publishers would struggle to get the same number of subscribers on those platforms. And the amount of work (and money) required to reach readers on a diverse set of platforms, each with its own problems, would be huge.

I don't think Google is doing a great service to the web when they announce the Google Reader death.