Unintentional Interfaces: Google Reader’s Censorship -Busting Power Will Be Hard to Replicate

Googles brand name made Reader work in Iranians favor.

Journalists and other professional nerds are angry thatGoogle is snuffing out its moribund RSS software, Reader. But as Quartzs Zach Seward points out, plain old normal folks in Iran used Reader quite a bit to get around internet censorship. And those users wont be helped by the Reader clones popping up in its wake, because Google Readers unintended power as an anti-censorship interface flows from its Google pedigree, not its Reader functionality.

Google Readers use of HTTPS makes it more difficult for censors to block than normal web traffic, which helps (sort of). But the bigger foot that Reader keeps shoved in the censors door is the google.com domain itself. To cut off Reader, as Seward writes, Iran would probably have to block all of Google and its many popular services in order to keep its citizens from using Reader. [See update below.] Even the censors dont want to do that, at least not now. So Reader persisted, an obsolete product providing unintentionally vital value to Iranians by riding like a remora on the rest of the google.com shark. Until July 1 2013, when Google does what the censors couldnt, and scrapes the remora off.

Google is a business, not a public utility, and its decision to kill Reader makes business sense. But was maintaining Reader really so much of a drain on Googles vast resources that it couldnt have let the little remora keep hanging on as long as possible, as a kind of pro-bono, dont be evil brand-burnishing project? Google didnt design Reader to be used this way, and couldnt have predicted that it would be, but there it is. Why extinguish the benefit?

Reader came out of Google Labs, which spun out interesting (or random) applications and inventions at a semi-alarming clip until Larry Page took over as CEO and shut it down. Labs didnt make much sense as a revenue-generating division. But what it was good at, with its throw spaghetti at the wall non-strategy, was creating opportunities for unintentional interfaces to emerge and catch on ones that, like Reader in Iran, could potentially fulfill Googles dont be evil moral imperative more clearly and cleanly than their on-purpose products do. (Of course, Google has been badly burned by unintentional UIs as well.)

But Labs is gone, and so is Reader. That google.com domain, though, is still as huge a boot in the door of Irans censors as it ever was[not necessarily for technical reasons, see update below]. Politicians often attach controversial riders to popular legislation because they know that their opposition wont throw the baby out with the bathwater. Google has been passively exercising similar power in Iran with Reader for a very good cause, and its a shame that it will come to an end. But maybe its a moment of opportunity for some Googlers to seize with their 20% time: what new thing on the edges of google.com might ride on it to do some unplanned good?

Update: I spoke to The Electronic Frontier Foundations Director for International Freedom of ExpressionJillian C. York, who pointed out that its not technically difficult for Iran to block Reader without taking down other Google services. (They can screw up, of course, she added.) Google Translate offers similar access around censored content by acting as a proxy. Google Reader offered much more convenience, she said, and an alternative US-based RSS reader set up in the same way could offer that same convenience. The problem is, how would Iranians find out about it? Theyre resourceful, but its a huge inconvenience, she said. In other words, the Google brand name is a significant part of that unintentional interface effect that helped Reader be a popular tool for circumventing censorship in that country. Replacing Reader in that regard would take more than just cloning the functionality. Would you have to be Google, and deliver it from a google.com URL, to pull that off? Not necessarily. But if interfaces are culture, then being Google certainly helps. Its just like here: [Google] ispopular, its trusted, York said. Which is why its unfortunate that Google would cut off so many users who use [Reader] this way.

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Unintentional Interfaces: Google Reader's Censorship -Busting Power Will Be Hard to Replicate