Tharun P Karun's Blog

Google Reader Retired — Backup & Restore

On March 13, 2013 — Google Reader retired, Deadline on July 1, 2013. Google has posted a notification to all the people that the Google Reader will be retired on July 1, 2013. As of now, Google states in their blog that they are closing down the Google reader because of the lack of resources. As for now, those who are using Google Reader, can download a backup of their data by visiting Takeout. This service will give you the ability to back up & transfer your subscription data in an XML file, and the following information will be downloaded as JSON files:

While taking a look at the alternatives, I’d recommend to use Netvibes — A cloud-based most popular web reader, offering a Google Reader & iGoogle like interface. You’ve still got until July to decide which RSS reader you want to move to, so try a few different services out and see what you like — A quick Google search will do!

Instructions

  1. Go to Google Takeout’s Reader page and click the Create Archive button. It’ll start building a file.
  2. Once it’s finished building, click the Download button.
  3. Open up the ZIP file you just downloaded and go through the folders inside. Inside the Reader folder, you can see a file called subscriptions.xml. Extract it to an easy place to access — Like Desktop.
  4. Open up your new feed reader, head into its settings, and find the Import option. Select it, and choose the subscriptions.xml file you just extracted. That’s it.