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Google Kills Its RSS Subscription Browser Extension Too

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Re: Google Kills Its RSS Subscription Browser Extension Too

#71

Post by mccr8 »

derefr wrote: post #50
MatthewPhillips wrote: post #35

Earlier quoted context omitted.

NaCl and Dart were not created in the open. Both were secret projects within Google before their alpha versions were released; Dart was in development for at least 2 years before it was announced to the world. By that time there was no way a third party could have an affect on any of the fundamentals. Also, for the record, PNaCl doesn't have a spec. It only has a reference implementation.

> By that time there was no way a third party could have an affect on any of the fundamentals. It's not like NaCl is a market-dominating monopoly format like MS Word .doc now or anything. Going by usage, it's basically still a prototype. Anyone (e.g. Mozilla) who disagrees with the fundamentals of the design so thoroughly that they don't want to work with what Google came up with, could create a competitor to NaCl us…

> could create a competitor to NaCl using the same basic idea (native-speed code execution using a pre-checked subset of machine instructions)

That's pretty much exactly what asm.js is. It is currently slower, but it is also a younger project. They both even use LLVM as part of their standard toolchain.

Re: Google Kills Its RSS Subscription Browser Extension Too

#72

Post by MatthewPhillips »

derefr wrote: post #62
MatthewPhillips wrote: post #55

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> I don't see how the way in which something is developed before its first release has any bearing on whether its current development is community-driven. You don't? Go look at the nacl commit logs and count how many non-Google employees are contributing. That it was developed in secret is precisely the reason for this (not because they are against outside contributors today). If you develop a supposedly open technol…

> Whatever you may feel about NaCl, Microsoft, Apple and Mozilla don't think it's good. Microsoft and Apple have very obvious reasons to avoid supporting NaCl, whatever they think of it--it is the last step in nullifying the relevance of Operating Systems. A browser that runs code at native speed is an operating system, fullstop. Mozilla is, as far as I can tell, just doing that same overly-idealist thing that Debian…

No, Mozilla legitimately doesn't think NaCl is a good idea and thinks they can achieve similar results with asm.js which has a far lower maintenance burden. Google is quick to come up with ideas that only they have the engineering budget to maintain.

Re: Google Kills Its RSS Subscription Browser Extension Too

#73

Post by mark_l_watson »

Andrenid wrote: post #34
onemorepassword wrote: post #7

I'm one tinfoil hat away from believing this isn't just about discontinuing unprofitable products, but a concerted effort to kill off support for open standards (RSS, CalDAV, what's next?) and turning the Google universe into a Facebook/Apple style walled garden called Google+. Evil plan or not, the days of Google as the champion of the open web are over.

This is actually the final step for me. I've been an avid Google fan since the early days. I use all the Google services, I use Chrome religiously, I convince family/friends to switch to Chrome from IE, and I've always been convinced Google is the one we're supposed to look up to for how things should be done. Yeah they've made mistakes, and G+ is a clusterfuck of brilliant talent thrown down a horrible path of close…

"I don't want to "like" them or add them to my social networks. I just want to read their shit."

+1 this nails it. I do share content links a few times a month on twitter and g+ but basically I want to read interesting stuff.

I have also started to realize that I rely too much on HN and Prismatic - nice sources of interesting material, but still limited. This appropriate shit storm over google moving to a walled g+ garden has increased my use (again) of RSS.

Re: Google Kills Its RSS Subscription Browser Extension Too

#74

Post by chris_j »

Kiro wrote: post #41
onemorepassword wrote: post #7

I'm one tinfoil hat away from believing this isn't just about discontinuing unprofitable products, but a concerted effort to kill off support for open standards (RSS, CalDAV, what's next?) and turning the Google universe into a Facebook/Apple style walled garden called Google+. Evil plan or not, the days of Google as the champion of the open web are over.

RSS is a broken standard so I would be happy if you were right.

What is it about RSS that is broken and what would you like to see replace it?

Re: Google Kills Its RSS Subscription Browser Extension Too

#75

Post by ldh »

Kiro wrote: post #38
choko wrote: post #16

I don't understand what people use to see new information from multiple websites at once if they aren't using RSS. Are they actually visiting 10 or 20 websites a day manually? Do "normal" users stick to just a few websites?

You don't need updates from 10 to 20 websites. Find one or two good aggregators. HN and Facebook are enough for me.

Don't tell me what I need. A lot of people like following more than just content that gets picked up by the hype machine, just like some people aren't satisfied only listening to top-40 music. Aggregators are good for new discovery, but they don't know more about what I'm interested in than I do.

Re: Google Kills Its RSS Subscription Browser Extension Too

#76

Post by nsns »

It seems that every decision that betters Google+ hurts the Google brand. If Google+ is the new Google, then Google is now Google-, obviously.

The fact that they are (allegedly) surprised at the amount of people using Reader is a tastement to how insignificant it is to their business.

Re: Google Kills Its RSS Subscription Browser Extension Too

#77

Post by michaelwww »

onemorepassword wrote: post #7

I'm one tinfoil hat away from believing this isn't just about discontinuing unprofitable products, but a concerted effort to kill off support for open standards (RSS, CalDAV, what's next?) and turning the Google universe into a Facebook/Apple style walled garden called Google+. Evil plan or not, the days of Google as the champion of the open web are over.

I'm not understanding all the people saying this kills RSS. There are plenty of RSS readers out there.

Re: Google Kills Its RSS Subscription Browser Extension Too

#79

Post by ldh »

tazjin wrote: post #25
choko wrote: post #16

I don't understand what people use to see new information from multiple websites at once if they aren't using RSS. Are they actually visiting 10 or 20 websites a day manually? Do "normal" users stick to just a few websites?

I consider myself a very technical person, but I never saw a reason to use RSS feeds (or Reader for that matter). There are not a lot of "content websites" that I follow (Fefes Blog, Beautiful Pixels, MacRumors...) but rather content aggregation websites like HackerNews or Reddit, which I use to get my daily dose of news (not just tech but all kinds of categories). And yes, I check those manually, often on my phone i…

Sure, RSS isn't ideally suited for "news" when you can just hit an aggregation site or two. But it's extremely useful for following particular content you're interested in regardless of popularity. If I come across a particularly insightful, well-written blog on some obscure programming topic I'd like to read more of what that person has to say without having to remember to check back at some point or cross my fingers that enough cool kids upvote it on an aggregator.

And the best part about Reader (and now The Old Reader, for me)? The comments come from people I mostly know or are vouched for by people I do, so there's a distinct lack of inane Reddit-y comments.

Re: Google Kills Its RSS Subscription Browser Extension Too

#80

Post by mdm_ »

squidi wrote: post #56
mdm_ wrote: post #47

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I suspect this as well, which is why I deleted my G+ account in protest the other day. It was remarkably easy to do, both practically (just click a couple buttons) and sentimentally (in ~2 years there has rarely been any activity from any of my contacts, and I follow most of them on Twitter anyway). I've heard people hem and haw over deleting their Facebook account; G+ offers no such difficulty.

Could you detail what actually gets deleted? The support page [1] is brief on details and I'm especially interested if it deletes photo albums which were originally uploaded via Picassa [1] http://support.google.com/plus/answer/1044503?hl=en-GB

AFAIK only G+ related things are deleted. I don't use Picassa, but my Gmail, Drive, YouTube, Wallet, Play Store, etc accounts are all unaffected.
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