I was forcibly reminded of how very dependent I have become upon free Google services this week.
On one Blogger-focused blog, I read that Google is replacing the Google Friend Connect service (which lets a user follow a specific blog) with Google+ Circles, which means a user follows everything Google-related by another user. As the post notes, a follower might only be interested in the one blog… and not everything else. So, that sucks.
Then, on March 13, I signed into Google Reader (as I do every day) and received the warning that the service would be gone come July. That also sucks. In addition to the blogs that I follow via GFC, I subscribe to many other sites\’ feeds… and use Google Reader for all of them. Even the third-party applications that I use to read feeds depend upon Google Reader.
So, if you wonder why I stopped loving you via GFC, it is not a lack of love. I just moved my feed subscriptions from GFC/Reader to a third-party application… that I hope does not also disappear soon.