Google Kills Its RSS Subscription Browser Extension Too

+1 This is what I have been concerned about also. I rely a lot on Blogger, Gmail, and (now) G+ photo albums. I like the way Blogger is easily mapped to a sub domain (blog.markwatson.com) and I don't have to run blogging software myself. GMail has been central in my workflow and I like the convenience of taking pictures on my droid phone and have all pictures auto uploaded to G+.

However, I have been thinking of starting an open source project that would be a one JAR deploy that would support personal photo album with easy sharing, blogging, live messaging (ironically I would like to use Apache Wave), and perhaps email (but probably not). I believe that since most technical people have their own servers and many of us are tired of walled gardens that this might garner a few users besides myself.

I was with you on the first paragraph but the second goes off the rails on the second sentence. It's hard to say that Google isn't also championing the open web unless you claim that Chrome isn't a Google product - NaCL and Dart are interesting experiments but it's not like Google hasn't poured a TON of expensive, high-quality time into creating an industry-leading JavaScript engine (along with CSS, HTML5, etc. support) and put a similar amount of time into evangelism, developer outreach, etc.

Even if Google cancelled Chrome tomorrow, the entire open web community would owe them a debt of gratitude for administering the coup de grace to IE's reputation as the only significant desktop browser and pushing Mozilla to heavily invest in performance and the user experience – they cared about them before but as we can see now, setting your goal as “better than IE” was still too low.

There were a bunch of nice things which happened around that time – Firefox, Safari, iPhone, etc. – but the thing which really opened the desktop market moving was Chrome shipping a radically fast, user-friendly browser which you could install even on typical corporate IT-mismanaged desktops and which you never needed to think about updating. Web standards advocates had spent years preaching using standards first and fallbacks for compatibility and related ideas but the rise of Chrome seems to be what got the mainstream web developer to really internalize that idea and start coding with the assumption that the browser would improve before they revisited a site.

It's also a great way to piss people off and have them go "fuck this guy and his shitty blog with no RSS feed" and mentally assign it to bin 13 and never come back.

When I visit a blog or site with no RSS feed, I know my first thought is something like "What a bunch of amateurs, why would I waste my time with this?"

Now, of course, people like me (and other HN readers) may not be your target audience, and your decision may actually work out best for you in the long run. It's your choice, I just hope it was made with full consideration for how some people will react to it. :-)

I know from some of the parties that have shown interest in my company that the highest levels of media are very concerned about being not just marginalized, but trivialized.

We have made ZERO deals for, always, one or both of two reasons:

1) The investors want to control the content and under the CDA/DMCA definitions be publishers.

2) The belief that people are unwilling to pay for news.

Up until 2012, there were doubters that online subscription is the only bet the industry can make to persist. What the interested parties will absolutely never agree to is a system that they don't retain absolute control of the message with.

It is just my speculation now, but I believe they thought I wouldn't get an actual information exchange built without their resources and assistance. I did and now there is some panic because we are one break-out event away from changing the news industry forever. I say forever because people will see a different future and want that once they understand it.

After six months in open beta I know what needs to be done and it isn't pivoting. Mostly UI and colors with some feature polishing. This next iteration will polish the foundation of the nwzPaper system and then we will integrate the facilities to complete the incentive structure and adapt the article ranking as volume builds.

We will be doing some new licensing arrangements to balance the need for producers to earn something with the need for news information to be public, accessible, available and free.

As a developer, you should look at nwzPaper as a central locking agent in a distributed system.

I'll go out on the limb and suggest that google is trying to kill the ecosystem that nurtured it and focus on more mainstream nanny and media for to be cosumable for ages 10-14 or some such number. News papers target groups with lower intelligencer ratio and TV goes even further.

With that I don't think google wants to support independent internet anymore - it does not go well with investors and profitability. And can roust some smart minds that just might bring the whole google empire to its knees(or more aptly make it irrelevant). At this point google can be called the internet in some sense. And if such status can be argued for then it is not interest for google to support resources out side of its "google is the internet" domain.

Most companies go through such cycles and it seems that google is sort of outgrowing itself. It is sort of popular with G+ but largely it has failed in the social arena. I has captured some market share with lowcost android phones. But there is no certain future in Silicon Valley. One can say google is tired and is withdrawing from being rapacious inventor and instigator of new technologies.

...

my 2c. Just an opinion :)