If you’re coming to this post from Google Reader, you will soon be requiring a different way to follow the feeds of your favorite news sites and topics, as Google announced last night that it’s saying goodbye to Reader on July 1. But there are those who refuse to say goodbye so easily.

In a post on the Google Reader blog, the company explains the rationale for ditching the popular RSS reader:

There are two simple reasons for this: usage of Google Reader has declined, and as a company we’re pouring all of our energy into fewer products. We think that kind of focus will make for a better user experience.

This was just one of a number of “spring cleaning” items announced yesterday by the Internet titan, though it’s the one that is aggravating the most Consumerist readers, a number of whom have pointed us to the petition recently launched at the appropriately named KeepGoogleReader.com.

According to the site, it already has more than 23,000 e-signatures from people who either want Google to keep Reader operating or open up the source code so that the community can figure out a way to run it without the aid of Google.

There is also this petition at Change.org, which already has nearly 68,000 signatures, though this one does not include the open-source suggestion.

So if you want to keep Reader breathing, think about adding your plea to one or both of these petitions, because it will likely take a lot more than a few thousand people to sway a decision made by the Google folks.

Meanwhile, Google is simply telling Reader users who want to transfer their feeds to other services to use Google Takeout.

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