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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

#91

Post by marknutter »

ldh wrote: post #79
tazjin wrote: post #25

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 finger…

Most of the time the author has a Twitter account you can follow and they post not only links to their new articles but also random interesting thoughts you wouldn't necessarily get through RSS.

Re: Google Kills Its RSS Subscription Browser Extension Too

#92

Post by baby »

mindcrime wrote: post #85
baby wrote: post #59

Earlier quoted context omitted.

But that's also not what I want. I want people to come check regularly (or not) if something is new. That's a way to create loyal visitors.

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 decisi…

I feel like you're over reacting. It's really not a game changer feature. I know I'll hurt the feeling of 1% of my visitors by not including it, the clever rest of the RSS users will first judge whether the content is worth it or not.

Re: Google Kills Its RSS Subscription Browser Extension Too

#93

Post by jms18 »

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.

Yes, RSS 2.0 has a bunch of problems. That is why this -- http://www.ietf.org/rfc/rfc4287 -- was developed.

IETF standards have a history of longevity, and I suspect this format will be around a very long time.

Re: Google Kills Its RSS Subscription Browser Extension Too

#94

Post by jms18 »

baby wrote: post #49
lignuist wrote: post #14

Twitter has disabled RSS this month too. Is RSS too open for the big players?

I disabled it on my blog a long time ago because I want people to actually come to my website to read my posts. See the "related" posts and the "comments" section etc... I guess it's even more obvious if you have ads on the website.

If you don't have a news feed, how would a reader know to check for new posts?

If you expect readers to check your site daily, that doesn't scale very well. I follow 200+ blogs; I would never be able to remember/bookmark all of them to visit regularly.

Re: Google Kills Its RSS Subscription Browser Extension Too

#95

Post by cowkingdeluxe »

Udo wrote: post #67

I think they're going to shut down Blogger next. It's a neglected platform at best, and it too encroaches on some partial functionality that could be offered by G+. Picasa is in the process of being absorbed completely into G+. We're in the middle of a massive consolidation. They're closing down and walling off everything they can. When the smoke clears Google will have transformed from an open standards company into…

This is one of my concerns as well. I use blogger for clients as well.

They've shut down or are shutting down a few things I've used a decent amount, iGoogle, Reader, occasionally Code Search, and now their XMPP usage is in doubt (https://www.fsf.org/blogs/sysadmin/google-backslides-on-fede...) which I use for OTR instant messaging. I really liked being able to go explore Google Labs as well.

While losing any of the above isn't crippling, I certainly didn't expect to lose them, and it will make me have additional questions about using other Google products.

I guess it magnifies the difference between web and desktop apps.

Re: Google Kills Its RSS Subscription Browser Extension Too

#96

Post by mindcrime »

baby wrote: post #92
mindcrime wrote: post #85

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 decisi…

I feel like you're over reacting. It's really not a game changer feature. I know I'll hurt the feeling of 1% of my visitors by not including it, the clever rest of the RSS users will first judge whether the content is worth it or not.

Could be. But lots of people "overreact". Not everyone who reacts differently than you expect or anticipate is "overreacting".

But, again, if you've made a conscious decision that it's OK to alienate a certain subset of potential visitors, and your business can withstand that, then you've made a rational - and possibly quite correct - decision.

I don't begrudge you the right to make that decision, although I might say I dislike it or whatever.

Re: Google Kills Its RSS Subscription Browser Extension Too

#97

Post by jmharvey »

When Google announced they were killing off Reader, the big problem was that there was no obvious alternative. That's not the case when they remove features I like from Chrome. I hear Firefox is pretty good these days, I'll probably try switching over and see how I like it.

Re: Google Kills Its RSS Subscription Browser Extension Too

#98

Post by tomjen3 »

mdm_ wrote: post #47
Andrenid wrote: post #34

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 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.

I have too much bound up on gmail to risk closing my account and may be one of the ten people world wide who actually use G+, although not that often.

Re: Google Kills Its RSS Subscription Browser Extension Too

#99

Post by tomjen3 »

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.

I do.

Re: Google Kills Its RSS Subscription Browser Extension Too

#100

Post by alexqgb »

mark_l_watson wrote: post #82
mark_l_watson wrote: post #81

Earlier quoted context omitted.

+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 start…

Also: for many years I have forwarded email from my own domain to GMail. I am going to stop doing that even though I really like their anti spam service. It probably makes more sense to just use my gmail account for access to customer's shared google docs, etc. in other words, still use useful Google services but stop relying too much on them. I also now prefer paid services. Evernote and Dropbox, for examples, are c…

I set up my own domain (hosted by InMotion, who have fantastically good customer service) and run my email through that. My initial reservation was that I'd be relying on spam filters that were inferior to Google's. In practice, it hasn't been a problem at all. Obviously, this is anecdotal, but the light-years ahead advantage in spam filtering that Google one had seems to have eroded to the point where it's no longer enough to keep me on gmail.

I still have my gmail account, but it's no longer primary.

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