Nothing lasts forever. That includes discontinued Google Reader, the RSS service many of us have come to rely on for keeping up with our favorite websites and aggregated news gathering. Google Reader is one of many services and products Google has sunset over the years, and probably the one that's caused the most furor. The good news is you can transfer your Google Reader feeds to another RSS reader in just a few steps--and back up all of your other Google data (stored in Google Drive, YouTube, Picasa Web Albums, Contacts, and more) pretty easily.

~ March 18, 2013

Google Takeout, as described by the Data Liberation Front organization, makes "escaping from Google products as easily as possible." It also makes saving your data for a simple backup or just exporting select services' information to be imported in non-Google services much easier. As of this writing, you can export your data from:

• Google+ +1s
• Blogger
• Buzz
• Contacts
• Drive
• Google+ Circles (Transfer your Google+ connections to another account)
• Google+ Stream
• Latitude
• Pages
• Picasa Web Albums
• Profile
• Reader
• Voice
• YouTube

How to Back Up Your Google Data

Backing up your data with Google Takeout will create an archive of your information in open, portable formats such as HTML. You can download your data as an archive of your entire Google account (for the services that work with Google Takeout) or select specific services.

Step 1: Head to Google Takeout

Step 2: Select what to back up. If you want to download all of the available data, click the "Create Archive" button. Otherwise you can click the "Choose services" button at the top to select just one or a few services (e.g., Google Reader), for a quicker download.

(If you've previously created an archive with Google Takeout, you can access that data with the "Downloads" button at the top.

Step 3: Wait or get a notification when your download is done. While the data is being compiled, you'll see a "building" status. This can take a while (hours even), depending on the amount of data you have stored in each service (Picasa and Google Drive were big ones for me). Instead of waiting for that to turn to "complete" and the zipped files available for download, you can select "Email me when ready."

Step 4: Download and open the zipped files. The takeout file you download is a zipped file. Unzip it to find folders for each service.

How to Transfer Your Google Reader Feeds to Another RSS Service

Google recommended exporting your Google Reader data with Google Takeout (before the retirement date of July 1, 2013) if you want to use those feeds with RSS alternatives. Here are the steps for taking your Google Reader feeds to another reader, such as Feedly or Flipboard.

Step 1: Locate the subscriptions.xml file. After you use Google Takeout to export Google Reader, you'll find a subscriptions.xml file in the Reader folder of the archive. Copy it to a location easy to access.

Step 2: Import the XML file into your reader. RSS apps differ in how they import or integrate Google Reader feeds, but generally, you should look for an import option in the app. Using Feedly (web, iOS, Android) as an example, all you have to do is click the "Connect to Google Reader" button on the home page when you first start up. Feedly is an attractive RSS reader that can layout your feeds in a list, like Google Reader, or in magazine-style and other layouts. It also supports keyboard shortcuts and alternate color schemes.

Your Google Reader feeds can also be ported to Flipboard, Zite, and other popular readers for iOS and Android. Look in the settings to add your Google Reader account in the apps and give the app permission on Google, and that should be it.