The People Behind Google Reader #

If Google Reader were a movie or TV show, at the end of the spectacle the credits would roll and you would get to see who was responsible for what you just saw. But in today's age, software "about box credits" are no longer common.

I thought it might be nice, for the sake of posterity, to list all those who worked on Reader over the years. There's been a lot of discussion about Reader's imminent shutdown, but most of it focused on Google (the corporate entity) and its strategy. However, at the end of the day, Reader was built by people. I and a few others have been lucky enough to be more visible, but everyone involved deserves credit and thanks. This is especially the case since as Chris and Brian have described, Reader faced quite a few internal struggles. As I remember it, nearly everyone on the Reader team explicitly requested to join it, and often had to fight to keep their role.

Coming up with this list was difficult, both technically (can you name all your coworkers going back 8 years?), and because it was tough to decide where to draw the line. Google is a big company, and many people in many supporting roles helped to Reader out. First, here's a list of all full-time Reader team members:

Additionally, here's others who contributed to Reader in various roles at Google:

  • Design: Micheal Lopez
  • Executives: Greg Badros, Jeff Huber, Pavni Diwanji
  • Legal: Halimah DeLaine
  • Localization: Gabriella Laszlo, John Saito, Katsuhiko Momoi, Sasan Banava
  • PR: Nate Tyler, Oscar Shine, Sonya Boralv
  • Product Management: Bruce Polderman, Sabrina Ellis
  • Product Marketing: Kevin Systrom, Louis Gray, Peter Harbison, Robby Stein, Tom Stocky, Zach Yeskel
  • Quality Assurance: Amar Amte, Jan Carpenter, Kavitha Venkatesan, Madhuri Kulkarni, Thanh Le
  • Site Reliability Engineering: Chen Wang, Christoph Pfisterer, David Parrish, Ed Bardsley, Eric Weigle, Gary Luo, Huaxia Xia, James Long, Jerry Zhiwei Cen, Keith Brady, Lantian Zheng, Liren Chen, Matthew Eastman, Nadav Samet, Niall Sheridan, Olivier Beyssac, Patrick Scott, Paul Chien, Pereira Braga, Petru Paler, Sara Smollett, Scott Lamb, Sebastian Adamczyk, Vladimir Filipović, Wensheng Wang, Yu Liao
  • 20% time and additional engineering: Aaron Boodman, Abdulla Kamar, Akshay Patil, Aman Bhargava, Brad Fitzpatrick, Brett Bavar, Brett Slatkin, Charles Chen, Ed Ho, John Pongsajapan, Olga Stroilova, Peter Baldwin, Steve Jenson, Steve Lacey, T.V. Raman, Wiktor Gworek
  • User Experience Designers: Jonathan Terleski, Sean McBride
  • User Experience Research: Anna Avrekh, David Choi, Nika Smith, Theresa Sobczak
  • User Support: Graham Waldon, Paul Wilcox, Wen-Ai Yu

I'm sure I'm missing names and got things wrong, so don't hesitate to contact me with corrections. And to everyone that I worked with on Reader, it was a pleasure!

P.S. For another take on the people behind Reader, see Chris's #unsungHeroesOfGoogleReader tweets.

15 Comments

Is there any talk about open-sourcing GReader?
Well, you made something great where I spent several hours a day for a long time.
Thanks for all the fish!
Just guessing that both Roger and Ella are missing from that list ( http://productforums.google.com/d/msg/reader/-lNswaKd4JQ/sIdsYTkfdZAJ )
Matti: Those weren't their real names.
Thank you all...what you developed has served me well over the years, will miss it.
Good run. Guess it's back to Bloglines...
Really nice investigation ! It's maybe for that that they close Gogle reader because no more people in Google to work on it :)
So Google just couldn't let Reader run by itself? (i'm assuming it was self-autonomous). What inconvenience really did it bring to the sun rising on Google every morning that made them to not even bear the thought of letting it hum away silently on Google infrastructure? Or maybe Google has seen the future of news consumption and Reader is not part of it.

Great product, will be missed.
Thanks to everyone for developing Google Reader!
"I'm sure I'm missing names and got got things wrong"

Read that carefully.
a very very good product. i'll miss it.
(si felicitari pentru ce ai facut la el)
Thank you all for your great work in making a wonderful web-based RSS reader. It is just sad that it won't be allowed to continue after today.
Thanks!

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