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How Google helped destroy adoption of RSS feeds (2023)

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Re: How Google helped destroy adoption of RSS feeds (2023)

#101

Post by inigyou »

dhosek wrote: post #82
mathieudombrock wrote: post #71

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What I don't understand about the "RSS can't support ads" argument is that most of my RSS feeds don't actually let me read the article. Just a headline and a snippet at most. So if I want to actually read the article I'm going to have to load their page.

I’ve encountered feeds that do this and I tend to not keep those subscriptions long. That said, some feeds often have content that doesn’t present well in my feed reader and I’ll end up clicking to view the web presentation What I miss is that back when Safari had RSS built in was I used to just open all the new articles in tabs from an RSS list in my bookmark bar. This is the experience I really would like to recove…

Doesn't Firefox still have this? It's a special kind of bookmark folder populated by RSS.

Re: How Google helped destroy adoption of RSS feeds (2023)

#103

Post by fiddlerwoaroof »

timmg wrote: post #27
bakemawaytoys wrote: post #7

Google’s obviously fake excuse for killing their RSS reader (declining usage) was especially maddening at the time because they were pushing Google+ - which _nobody_ used.

As someone who was a big fan of Reader and worked at Google at the time (not on G+): I never understood why they didn’t try to put Reader into G+. Like you could imagine getting your RSS feed in your G+ stream. If you didn’t want any social stuff you could just use it as a reader. But it would also give you an easy way to share stuff from your feed. And it might have been useful for those providing RSS feeds to inter…

Google Buzz also seemed like a better path for Google to have a "social network" than what they tried to do with G+: Post short twitter-like things from various Google properties and have your friends posts show up in the same place. Between Buzz, Reader and gmail chat, Google had a fairly solid lineup of social products that they killed one way or another to boost G+.

Re: How Google helped destroy adoption of RSS feeds (2023)

#104

Post by inigyou »

fsflover wrote: post #60
danesparza wrote: post #11

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm still bitter about Google Reader going away. I endorse this sentiment.

What prevents you from using RSS now? Outsourcing your RSS feed to a megacorp sounds like a horrible idea.

Who do you outsource yours to, or do you read with curl?

Re: How Google helped destroy adoption of RSS feeds (2023)

#106

Post by al_borland »

bakemawaytoys wrote: post #7

Google’s obviously fake excuse for killing their RSS reader (declining usage) was especially maddening at the time because they were pushing Google+ - which _nobody_ used.

The mainstream ended up using social media to solve the problem RSS had already solved years earlier… it just had poor marketing.

A lot of people do use RSS without realizing it, via podcasts.

Re: How Google helped destroy adoption of RSS feeds (2023)

#108

Post by ianburrell »

deepsun wrote: post #38
bakemawaytoys wrote: post #7

Google’s obviously fake excuse for killing their RSS reader (declining usage) was especially maddening at the time because they were pushing Google+ - which _nobody_ used.

Same thing with Google Music, it was perfect. You could stream, or could buy and download mp3, or you could upload your library to it. And the best feature: "I am feeling lucky" -- play a random song you ever liked and keep playing a generated playlist off it. But they killed it due to internal wars with YouTube Music that sucks. There's still nothing like Google Music.

The thing that sucks about Google Music is that they could have merged them but kept the good parts of both. Youtube Music is still missing features of Google Music. It would have been more than "just", but Google Music with Youtube backend and branding would have worked. It is the backend song licensing they wanted to merge.

The same happened with Google Podcasts. Merged into Youtube Music, not even separate Youtube Podcasts, and it sucks.

Re: How Google helped destroy adoption of RSS feeds (2023)

#109

Post by underlipton »

deepsun wrote: post #38
bakemawaytoys wrote: post #7

Google’s obviously fake excuse for killing their RSS reader (declining usage) was especially maddening at the time because they were pushing Google+ - which _nobody_ used.

Same thing with Google Music, it was perfect. You could stream, or could buy and download mp3, or you could upload your library to it. And the best feature: "I am feeling lucky" -- play a random song you ever liked and keep playing a generated playlist off it. But they killed it due to internal wars with YouTube Music that sucks. There's still nothing like Google Music.

GPM was amazing for keeping my library accessible on a device with all of 16GB of storage space, but for recommendations, Grooveshark took the cake. Spotify, Pandora, Tidal, Youtube... None have ever gotten close to GS in terms of showing me songs completely outside my wheelhouse that I immediately loved. Also likewise cruelly cut down by cynical forces.
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