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NewsGator gives full control of FeedDemon back to developer
The story of how NewsGator attempted to corner the market on consumer RSS has taken another strange turn. In an interview with Steven Hodson published on Hodson's Shooting at Bubbles site, Bradbury admits that he is no longer employed by NewsGator, but has retained the full rights to his popular FeedDemon RSS reader. NewsGator continues to offer FeedDemon, and the application is still NewsGator-branded, but the clear implication here is that NewsGator no longer owns the rights to the most popular native Windows RSS feed reader.
It's no secret that NewsGator almost single-minded focus on capturing the lucrative enterprise market allowed its efforts in the consumer space to falter, ultimately leading to NewsGator shutting down their once-popular NewsGator Online feed reader, having conceded the online feed reader battle to Google's upstart Google Reader, which has iterated faster, and performing better than NewsGator's online reader for a few years.
It's unfortunate that NewsGator has given up on this market. While it's certainly true that Google has a powerful and successful product on its hands, there is certainly room in the RSS space for more than one dedicated company. What this means for FeedDemon's Mac equivalent, NetNewsWire remains to be seen, but since NewsGator's current push for more enterprise business relies on the talents of Brent Simmons, NetNewsWire will likely remain a NewsGator property for the foreseeable future.
Whether that is good news or not is anyone's guess.
UPDATE: The previous headline of this post turned out to be incorrect, as Nick Bradbury points out in the comments. The relationship between FeedDemon, NewsGator and Bradbury is a bit confusing, but what he said in the interview was this: "I'm no longer employed by NewsGator. FeedDemon remains a NewsGator-branded product, but I'm 100% in charge of it now, and I'm once again an indie developer. FeedDemon is my sole focus – and my sole source of income." So, NewsGator owns FeedDemon, Bradbury works on FeedDemon, but Bradbury does not work FOR NewsGator any longer.
Bradbury also pointed us to a post by NewsGator's Greg Reinacker, explaining more about where things stand.
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Reader Comments (Page 1 of 1)
Nick Bradbury said 8:18PM on 11-01-2009
Contrary to what is being reported here, NewsGator *does* still own FeedDemon.
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Jay Hathaway said 9:42PM on 11-01-2009
Hey Nick, thanks for commenting — so, what's the current status between you and NewsGator? Want to set us straight?
Nick Bradbury said 9:59PM on 11-01-2009
Jay, I hoped to blog about this already but I'm taking care of a sick parent this week so the blog post had to wait. However, Greg Reinacker posted about the news a few days ago - see http://www.rassoc.com/gregr/weblog/2009/10/29/feeddemon-newsgator-and-mr-bradbury/
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Jay Hathaway said 10:16PM on 11-01-2009
Sorry we got it wrong, Nick. I've added a correction to the end of the post, and linked to Greg's blog. I hope that clears things up. Our best to your family, as well, and thanks again for commenting.
BorderRuffian said 9:57AM on 11-02-2009
NewsGator almost lost me with the way they handled the switch to Google Reader. During that mess I stopped using the iPhone version of NetNewsWire and found Newsstand, which is superior in every way. If they don't update the Mac version soon they will lose me altogether. FeedDemon is an excellent product so I will continue to use it and support it on my Windows machines - any plans for a Mac port?
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nintendo ds r4 said 8:41AM on 11-04-2009
NewsGator almost lost me with the way they handled the switch to Google Reader. keep posting. Will be visiting back soon.
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