Pocket Shutdown

[clairvoyant]

Originally Posted by DNSB

At this point, I tend to suspect that the decrease in Mozilla's funding is the likely reason for shutting Pocket down. Most of the funding from government sources in the USA is no longer available which took a big chunk out of their budget.

Sounds unlikely. To my knowledge they are almost solely (90%) funded by Google and according to Mozilla they are about to lose out on roughly $1.2m a year of government funding. This is in contrast to their $650m revenue.

More important is probably the fact that Mozilla foundation almost doubled in size over two years and decided to let go of 30% last year. Meanwhile they are fighting in court to keep their payments from Google and basically stay alive:

https://fortune.com/2024/08/05/mozil...search-ruling/

I reckon Pocket was a questionable purchase from the start.

Personally I had almost 20 000 read articles so seeing it go is unfortunate. I truly hope we'll see a proper replacement and maybe improvement for Kobo devices.

[Cootey]

When Mozilla forced us to switch from Pocket to their account system, I was one of those people who lost ALL their saved articles. I was so discouraged. So many articles, all categorized and sorted!! Ironically, I finally relented and set up a new account with them two weeks ago and started saving articles for reading again later only for this to happen.

I hope Kobo thinks of a new alternative, even if it’s paywalled behind VIP. The Pocket support differentiated them from other ereaders.

[jgneff]

Originally Posted by FlamingPeaches

That's frustrating. I wonder why they don't just open source it, seems more and more companies buy services and shut them down when they can't convert it to pure profit.

It looks as if most, if not all, of the Pocket client and back-end server code has finally been released on GitHub under open-source licenses now. It might not be easy, but Kobo could pick up the code and run the service itself.

[noobyme]

Originally Posted by jgneff

It looks as if most, if not all, of the Pocket client and back-end server code has finally been released on GitHub under open-source licenses now. It might not be easy, but Kobo could pick up the code and run the service itself.

was this intentional?
y no announcement? better save a copy

[noobyme]

Originally Posted by clairvoyant

Sounds unlikely. To my knowledge they are almost solely (90%) funded by Google and according to Mozilla they are about to lose out on roughly $1.2m a year of government funding. This is in contrast to their $650m revenue.

More important is probably the fact that Mozilla foundation almost doubled in size over two years and decided to let go of 30% last year. Meanwhile they are fighting in court to keep their payments from Google and basically stay alive:

https://fortune.com/2024/08/05/mozil...search-ruling/

I reckon Pocket was a questionable purchase from the start.

Personally I had almost 20 000 read articles so seeing it go is unfortunate. I truly hope we'll see a proper replacement and maybe improvement for Kobo devices.

were u using pocket as like an archive of remember me topics like me? I thought I had a lot of articles, around 2000. deleting them all took forever cuz on the app u can only delete 30 at a time when doing select all, though later i found out u have to scroll to bottom first then click select all

[compurandom]

Originally Posted by jgneff

It looks as if most, if not all, of the Pocket client and back-end server code has finally been released on GitHub under open-source licenses now. It might not be easy, but Kobo could pick up the code and run the service itself.

Is there a kobo client open sourced?

There's a lot of features in the android client that never showed up in the kobo client.

[johnnyb]

I’ve been using the Instapaper app successfully on a Boox Go 7 for some time now. Seems to me like this is the way forward if you don’t want to rely on proprietary integrations of internet services, and think that e-readers are not just for reading novels.
I hope that Kobo comes up with some alternative.

[Cootey]

Originally Posted by jgneff

It looks as if most, if not all, of the Pocket client and back-end server code has finally been released on GitHub under open-source licenses now. It might not be easy, but Kobo could pick up the code and run the service itself.

That’s fantastic! Thanks for the update and link. Hopefully, somebody can get a compatible service up and running that Kobo can integrate. Better yet, I’d love to see them spin off their own version with better web page support. It’s more than annoying when the article you hoped to read doesn’t appear on your Kobo bc Pocket treated it as a website instead of an article.

[Cootey]

Originally Posted by johnnyb

I’ve been using the Instapaper app successfully on a Boox Go 7 for some time now. Seems to me like this is the way forward if you don’t want to rely on proprietary integrations of internet services, and think that e-readers are not just for reading novels.
I hope that Kobo comes up with some alternative.

I’m glad to hear that Instapaper is still going strong. I used to use both services, but Kobo’s client was the deciding factor for me to switch entirely to Pocket years ago.

If the Kobo web browser wasn’t so rudimentary, we could run Instapaper as you do on your Boox Go 7.

[Cootey]

Originally Posted by noobyme

was this intentional?
y no announcement? better save a copy

As posted either in this thread or another, Mozilla had promised to open source the Pocket code, but never did. Looks like they’ve finally kept their promise.

[neclepsio]

Originally Posted by Cootey

I’m glad to hear that Instapaper is still going strong.

Thank you for pointing out Instapaper. It works better thank Pocket for me: entire paragraphs of a site I read are missing with Pocket.

To read Instapaper on Kobo, I browse to instapaper.com/epub. It generates an epub and sends a link to the registered email. Open the link, load the downloaded file on Google Drive, and it's done.

I hope someone could automate these extra steps.

[mdovell]

Well I just tried instapaper using calibre. Looks great with no issues. Having said this Pocket might be saved

https://techcrunch.com/2025/05/23/di...-from-mozilla/

[Cactus Chef]

Originally Posted by mdovell

Well I just tried instapaper using calibre. Looks great with no issues. Having said this Pocket might be saved

https://techcrunch.com/2025/05/23/di...-from-mozilla/

I would definitely prefer Pocket be saved and transferred to new owners that keep the same domain, because from a Kobo reading experience, I like my articles being articles, not EPUBs that show up in my main books library.

With that said, the Techcrunch article notes that Mozilla has not responded to the offer yet. I do hope they'll entertain buyout offers, though. It would be surprisingly petulant from an "open source" company to kill a product and not let anyone else use it either.

[kotatsu]

I would love if Kobo integrated Instapaper as a replacement. I've been a subscribed user of Instapaper for years and love using it with the send-to-Kindle feature. I'm planning on ditching Kindle for Kobo once they release some new models and it would be so nice to have Instapaper work with no fuss.