It took them long enough! Back in January I came up with five things that I’d like to see on Google Reader. 9 months later, they have added one of them. I guess that’s not too bad of a job considering they knocked out the largest item. Last night Google announced search for Google reader.

When I have thousands of feed articles that I browse through on a daily basis, it is impossible to retain all that information in my head. All I remember is snippets of information that I can then go back and reference. Thank god for the new feature. I have yet to take advantage of it but I know that this is going to be an insanely useful feature.

If any of the other feed readers are going to have a shot at maintaining a significant market share, they are going to have to add search. It’s as simple as that. Good luck indexing the millions of articles that people are reading though. Given that it took Google so long to launch this feature leads me to believe that this is a large technical achievement by their team. Alternatively, perhaps they were sitting on the beach for most of the summer thanks to their stock options. Who knows! One thing is for sure, Google Reader is still my feed reader of choice.

Update!

Google also added one of my other recommendations. They have upped the number of feed items that are displayed next to each subscription. Rather than saying “100+” every time your feed gets over 100, it displays the total number up until 1000 at which point it displays “1000+.” Great move! Google Reader has definitely received a serious upgrade.