口译时事：谷歌为何关闭阅读器

　　Google recently announced that it would be shutting down a few products. Such closures often lead to laments by users, as well as acknowledgments that not all ideas turn out to be winners. But this time one of the products is Google Reader. The announcement was the source of anguish. “They killed it like a butcher slaughters a chicken,” wrote Om Malik, founder of tech news site GigaOM.

　　谷歌(Google)最近宣布，它将关闭几项产品。这类关闭服务的举措总会引发用户的抱怨，同时人们也不得不承认，并非所有的创意最终都能成为赢家。但这一次，谷歌阅读器(Google Reader)也是要被关闭的产品之一。这条消息让很多人感到悲痛。科技新闻网站GigaOM的创始人奥姆 马利克(Om Malik)写道：“他们杀掉了阅读器，就像屠夫宰鸡一样。”

　　To recap, many websites, especially news sites, publish summaries as “feeds” in a format called RSS (Rich Site Summary or Really Simple Syndication). Google Reader, a free service, aggregates these feeds, bringing them together into one meta-newspaper of the user’s design. There are many competitors but Google is good at making news searchable and browsable. For people who help to make the news, especially bloggers, Google Reader was the tool of choice. This has led many to question the wisdom of the decision to close it. “By killing the flower,” wrote MG Siegler in TechCrunch, another news outfit, “Google could also kill the bees.”

　　为了概述自己的内容，很多网站(尤其是新闻网站)会把摘要发布为“源”(feed)，其格式称之为RSS。RSS是“Rich Site Summary”(富站点摘要)或“Really Simple Syndication”(聚合真的很简单)的首字母缩略词。谷歌阅读器是一项免费服务，它把这些源聚合起来，放在一张用户设计的“元报纸”(meta-newspaper)上。谷歌阅读器的竞争对手很多，但谷歌在方便用户搜索和浏览新闻方面做得很出色。对于制作新闻的人士——尤其是博客作者——而言，谷歌阅读器是首选工具。因此，很多人质疑关掉谷歌阅读器的决定是否明智。新闻网站TechCrunch的MG 西格勒(MG Siegler)写道：“在把花朵扼杀掉的同时，谷歌可能也杀掉了蜜蜂。”

　　Ah, bees! My own Reader account has more than 1,600 feeds painstakingly sorted into categories. It will be with regret that, when Reader is shut in July, I will bear witness to six years of favourites, notes, and so forth drifting away into nothingness. So I sympathise with the lamentations.

　　啊，蜜蜂!我本人的谷歌阅读器账号里有1600多个经过精心分类的源。遗憾的是，今年7月该阅读器被关闭时，我将目睹6年来的收藏、笔记等等付之一炬。因此，我很理解人们在这件事上感到的悲痛。

　　But what of Google? It is hard to empathise with the group – it is like empathising with the moon – but it has made many good choices. What, then, could this decision mean?

　　那么谷歌呢?它恐怕很难对谷歌阅读器的用户持同情之心——这就好像在同情月亮一样——但它做出过很多出色的抉择。那么这个决定的意义何在?

　　There is a simple interpretation: as an advertising company, Google must find blank places across the web, areas into which it can insert adverts. Google Reader is not manufacturing these empty spaces at a rate concomitant with current shareholder value. As a consumer of resources it must be destroyed, its body mulched into a more amenable digital loam.

　　一个简单的解释是：作为一家广告公司，谷歌必须在网站上找到空白区域，以便插入广告。而谷歌阅读器生成这类空白区域的速度，与谷歌当前的股东价值不相符。作为资源的消耗者，谷歌阅读器必须被消灭，它的尸体将化作更肥沃的数字土壤。

　　This view can be explored further. The value of the Reader system is accruing to the users, many of them in the media, rather than to Google. Users love the tool and want to keep it alive. However, Google cannot extract value and therefore cannot justify its continued operation.

　　这种观点可作进一步探讨。谷歌阅读器系统正在增加用户(其中很多用户是媒体从业者)的价值，却没有增加谷歌自身的价值。用户喜欢这个工具，希望它继续存在下去。但谷歌却无法从中挖掘价值，因此没有理由让它继续运营下去。

　　This is the downside to apps: when everything is online your ability to labour along in familiar ways is contingent upon money coming to the app provider. This works when we remain consumers, for example of media objects such as paywalled newspapers, Netflix and Spotify. We lease access to the databases, own nothing, and the access makes it worthwhile. But when we work inside these systems we increase our levels of risk. When Google Reader goes away, it will not be like a television show being cancelled – much work is lost, and the ability to access that work is also lost.

　　应用的不利之处在于，当一切东西都放到网上的时候，你能否以熟悉的方式工作将取决于应用提供商能否获得收入。如果我们始终是消费者，比如付费在线报纸、Netflix和Spotify等媒体的消费者，那么这条路就走得通。我们租用访问数据库的权限、不拥有任何东西，整件事的意义就在于这种访问权。但当我们在这些系统中工作时，我们面临的风险也加大了。谷歌阅读器被关闭时，其影响肯定与电视节目被取消不同——很多作品会因此丢失，同时我们也失去了访问这些作品的权限。

　　Users of free services get what they pay for – this is a well-understood problem of the web. But this is also a moment of transition. The internet began as a web of documents: it was there to send linked files around. It was a perfect vessel for news.

　　免费服务的用户获得了付费才能享有的东西，这是网络世界中一个众所周知的问题。不过，眼下也是一个转型的时刻。互联网最初只是一个文档的网络：它存在的目的就是把链接文件发送到各处。这简直是一个完美的新闻容器。

　　Somewhere along the line the document became secondary; applications, pure data and social networks arose. While these new structures may seem ephemeral they are actually far less ephemeral than newspapers and the like, which essentially start anew daily. Twitter, Facebook and Google are building huge databases of human behaviour. These companies are their databases. They control access to their data jealously and charge a premium to advertisers for the privilege of using them. Something such as RSS – decentralised, open, news-driven, representing a multiplicity of experiences – is difficult to fit into that model.

　　结果有一天，文档变得次要了;应用、纯数据和社交网络兴起了。这些新架构或许看上去更新频率很快，但其实它们在这方面远比不上报纸之类的东西——后者实际上是每天都从头到尾更新一遍。Twitter、Facebook以及谷歌正在构建关于人类行为的庞大数据库。这些企业就是它们的数据库。它们小心翼翼地控制着访问其数据的权限，广告主若想拥有使用这些数据的权限，就得支付高额的费用。RSS之类的东西是分散、开放、由新闻驱动的，代表着多样化的体验，很难融入这种模式中。

　　The ultimate conclusion is possibly a troubling one. “As a company we’re pouring all of our energy into fewer products. We think that kind of focus will make for a better user experience,” wrote Alan Green, a Google software engineer, on the official Reader blog. This is classic public relations – but assume it is also the truth. What are the big new products? Google Plus, a social network, and Google Keep, a notetaking app, are focused on capturing human interaction.

　　最终结论可能令人忧心。谷歌软件工程师艾伦 格林(Alan Green)在谷歌阅读器官方博客上写道：“作为一家企业，我们正把全部精力倾注在更少的产品上。我们认为这种专注会带来更好的用户体验。”这番话是典型的公关措辞，但我们假设它说的也是事实。重大的新产品到底是什么?社交网络Google+以及笔记应用Google Keep，二者的主要目标是捕捉人际互动。

　　Google is the interface to the internet. It is sending a clear signal that “news”, documents and blog posts are all fine places to put ads but the news itself is of less concern. There was an era when Google needed the media but now it needs to own more of the relationship between the user and what they consume. For Google Reader and its fans, “better user experience” is not a goal. It is an epitaph.

　　谷歌是互联网的接口。它正在发出一个清晰的信号：“新闻”、文档以及博客帖子都是放置广告的好地方，但新闻本身却不那么重要。曾经有一段时间，谷歌是需要媒体的，但现在它需要掌控的，更多是用户与用户所消费产品之间的关系。对谷歌阅读器及其拥趸而言，“更好的用户体验”不是目标，而是墓志铭。


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