Google has announced that Google Reader, its RSS aggregation system, will be turned off on July 1st. Citing years of declining usage, Reader is one of several victims of the advertising giant's periodic "spring cleaning."

The Reader RSS platform had a popular Web front-end, and was also used to provide behind-the-scenes support for a wide range of RSS clients.

Current users of Reader will be able to export their list of feeds up until the cut-off date using Google's Takeout facility.

Google's last periodic clean, its "winter clean," saw the company announce the end of support for Exchange ActiveSync (EAS) for non-paying customers. After considerable outcry and negotiation with Microsoft, Google postponed the switch-off by six months; it'll now run until July 31st.

That Google was willing to change its plans over EAS might give Reader users a slight glimmer of hope that enough pressure could make the company change its mind. Nonetheless, current users (including most of us here at Ars) should look at alternative services such as NewsBlur.

We'll going to follow up later tonight with some thoughts on replacements.