Google Reader is going to be shutdown by July 2013

A decision by Google to close its popular Reader, which allowed users to easily follow updates from around the web, has sparked a storm of criticism by devoted fans of the service.

Google announced the move late on Wednesday as part of a “spring-cleaning” strategy pushed by founder and chief executive Larry Page to cull non-essential projects at the web software giant.

The company announced a shake up of its top ranks on Wednesday with Android chief Andy Rubin stepping aside in favour of Sundar Pichai, boss of the company’s Chrome browser and operating system. Google broke up its mapping and commerce unit, with executive Jeff Huber moving to research division Google X, which is working on projects like Google Glass and the company’s self-driving cars.

Urs Holze, senior vice-president of technical infrastructure, said the decision was made to close down Google Reader because it had been steadily losing users over the years as people switched to Facebook and Twitter to keep track of web updates.