You know, Google, the web already had this feature

What started out as a quirky, innovative company that bucked all of the suit-and-tie trends (see Microsoft, HP, even Apple in some regards) of Silicon Valley, has now turned into a monstrous calamity with no regard for its users. Up until 2009, it was breezy and beautiful, but right now, at this moment, it's a different story altogether.

Don't be evil? Pfeh. The only thing left of Google that they haven't managed to screw up or cause outrage over is search. The only thing they can't afford to change, for fear people will stop using it.

This harkens back far before Google, far before any company dared invest in the Internet. This type of corporate mentality is one we see often, but tend to forget quickly. Apple did it in the 1990s. Microsoft is doing it now; look at Windows 8.

Any corporation that strays too far from its roots with fail. Not in a fiscal sense, but in an ethical sense, and that's the worst type of failure there is. Do I hope they get their shit together and start being Google again? Of course. They could start by fixing YouTube, exhuming Google Reader, and rethinking the decision to end iGoogle.

And please, PLEASE, reinvent that horrid thing called Google+. Even the name sucks.

But I find the whining a bit distracting since the same thing that made RSS in the first place is still out there. There is no "patent" on aggregating RSS feeds or creating a more durable (and by that I mean self sustainable) service which has the same capability.

My advice is don't look at this as a loss, look at this as an opportunity. Rarely does the invading army come back to revisit the burned out village they have left behind. It is dead to them, so it is a uniquely safe place to avoid their future gaze.

[1] I asked Eric Schmidt at one of the TGIF (friday) meetings why taking the $30M/year they spent on bottled water and putting it into their bank account made sense. His answer was that there were a lot of unknowns facing Google and the only insurance they had for dealing with them was to have a lot of capital. There is always something that could happen, that you might have prevented if you had just a bit more money. And sliding rapidly down that slope as early as 2007 (when I asked my question) it continues to be the goto answer to this day.

I certainly don't disagree with your points, but it's moot. Normal users don't care about things like "privacy" or "neutrality" or "standards". If it works and is free, that's good enough. And the page views Google gets is testament to the fact that nobody outside of the HN-esque world has any issues with Google.

Heck, I (and most people here) use GMail+Search+Docs+etc for the same reasons "normal" people do.. the privacy I give up is worth the convenience of their products.