About a month ago I wrote about my love/hate relationship with Google Reader.  After careful consideration and several weeks of side-by-side comparisons, I'm ditching it.  For now.  As I said back then:

It's slow to update.  Really… really slow.  I can post something to the Internet Marketing Monitor before I leave for the day and it still hasn't shown up by the time I get home.  For example, I posted something this morning at 10:25 am (according to WordPress).  It's timestamped 11:40 in Google Reader.  That's 75 minutes late.  And I know it's not just the Internet Marketing Monitor.   I just got an update from the Yahoo Search Blog… almost an hour late.  I can go to a site directly and see content that hasn't shown up in Google Reader yet.  And it doesn't show up for around an hour.

I've been giving Bloglines a go since writing that.  And while I prefer the interface of Google Reader, the functionality of Bloglines is much better.  The delay between something being published and showing up in Bloglines is minuscule compared to Google Reader.  I can leave Bloglines open all day and it doesn't have an impact on my system resources.

That's the way it should be.

When you depend on a service to be timely, and there are products that deliver on that timeliness in a more… well… timely… manner, the decision to switch is simple.  And luckily Google makes it easy to move my massive list of RSS subscriptions from Reader to something else.

The popularity of Google Reader is understandable from a new user perspective.  As I said a month ago, I haven't really experimented with online feed readers much.  But I don't understand why people who have been using online feed readers for a while are switching to Google Reader.  Is it because Google made it?  Is it for the interface alone (which is superior).  I know it can't be for the delivery speed.

Three suggestions for the Google Reader team:

1. Speed up syndication!  Other readers can update quickly.  Why does it take Google Reader over an hour (sometimes more) to discover new items in a feed?
2. Minimize system resource usage.  I know AJAX can be a bit taxing.  But the old version of Google Reader wasn't as resource intensive as this new one gets when you leave it open.
3. Add a search!  Come on… Google is "the search company".  How can a company that built its business on Internet search release a feed reader without a search option?

Instead of working on adding pretty new buttons and fluff stuff like that the Google Reader team should be focusing on issues that actually affect the usefulness of their products.

For now, I'm switching to Bloglines for Internet Marketing Monitor usage.  My personal feed list (which is much smaller) will stay in Google Reader.  Here at the IMM time is of the essence.  With my personal feed… not so much.  If Google gets its feed-reading act together I'll gladly switch back.

The lesson here is simple:  a pretty face will attract some users.  But a product that works well will keep them.