Feedly says its Google Reader clone will offer a seamless transition

Jumping on the news it says it had anticipated, Feedly posted a notice yesterday that says it will offer a solution tailored to those who are being booted by Google Reader.[/caption]Yesterday, Google freaked out most every journalist, and some of the general public too, when it announced it would be shutting down its Google reader service on July 1st.

Google has shuttered more than 70 apps and services to date, in a effort to concentrate on its core business.

The news left many scrambling for an alternative. Turns out, one of the more familiar RSS readers may offer the best solution. Jumping on the news it says it had anticipated, Feedly posted a notice yesterday that says it will offer a solution tailored to those who are being booted by Google. In a message on their website, Feedly said:

“Google announced today that they will be shutting down Google Reader. This is something we have been expecting for some time: We have been working on a project called Normandy which is a feedly clone of the Google Reader API – running on Google App Engine. When Google Reader shuts down, feedly will seamlessly transition to the Normandy back end. So if you are a Google Reader user and using feedly, you are covered: the transition will be seamless.”

Feedly, originally dubbed Feeddo, was first released on June 15, 2008. The service operates as an extension available for web browsers such as Google Chrome and Mozilla Firefox.

Google reader was created in early 2005 by Google engineer Chris Wetherell through Google Labs. Late in 2011, Google removed some of the features of the service such as the built in sharing functionality, and replaced it with the Google+ +1 button.

Wetherell, talking to Gigaom’s Om Malik yesterday, said he wasn’t surprised by the decision.

“When they replaced sharing with +1 on Google Reader, it was clear that this day was going to come,” he said. Wetherell said Google executives were always uncertain about the service.