Google Kills Its RSS Subscription Browser Extension Too • Hacker News Board

Re: Google Kills Its RSS Subscription Browser Extension Too

#11

Post by kirushik » Sat, Mar 16, 2013, 12:49 PM UTC

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.

Obviously, the next step is XMPP federation protocol support crippling in GTalk: https://www.fsf.org/blogs/sysadmin/google-backslides-on-fede...

Re: Google Kills Its RSS Subscription Browser Extension Too

#12

Post by prathibhanu » Sat, Mar 16, 2013, 12:51 PM UTC

pavs wrote: post #3

Its working just fine here...

I take this as an opporunity to develope something like multiplx.com. Check it out

Re: Google Kills Its RSS Subscription Browser Extension Too

#13

Post by cs702 » Sat, Mar 16, 2013, 12:54 PM UTC

Embrace, give away, extinguish:

  1. Embrace [open web standard].
  2. Give away [standards-based product].
  3. Extinguish: if/after competition evaporates, discontinue product.

Result: walled gardens.

Re: Google Kills Its RSS Subscription Browser Extension Too

#14

Post by lignuist » Sat, Mar 16, 2013, 1:01 PM UTC

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

Re: Google Kills Its RSS Subscription Browser Extension Too

#15

Post by est » Sat, Mar 16, 2013, 1:02 PM UTC

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.

At such pace, Google will take out Google Takeout.

Re: Google Kills Its RSS Subscription Browser Extension Too

#16

Post by choko » Sat, Mar 16, 2013, 1:03 PM UTC

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?

Re: Google Kills Its RSS Subscription Browser Extension Too

#17

Post by mindctrl » Sat, Mar 16, 2013, 1:05 PM UTC

The tech community has a wonderful ally in Mozilla, who has been committed to open standards since the beginning. They struggled with bloat issues and Google came along with Chrome, which was fast and shiny and, at the time, somewhat lean. And the tech community practically abandoned their ally in favor of the corporate controlled, profit motivated Google product.

When the tech community gets behind something, things happen - like IE market share tanking because Microsoft refused to support standards and the tech community wanting nothing to do with that. As time has gone on, Chrome has become a memory hog. So it's getting like Firefox used to be. (For those who haven't tried Firefox in a while, it's much faster now.) Now that Google is showing their disdain for standards, the best thing the tech community can do is ditch Google and return to the ally that's been there all along, Mozilla. And let there be a lesson in all this.

Re: Google Kills Its RSS Subscription Browser Extension Too

#18

Post by MatthewPhillips » Sat, Mar 16, 2013, 1:05 PM UTC

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.

That ship sailed a long time ago. I see it as when they gave up on Friend Connect / OpenSocial as when they sort of gave up on the idea of open-first, and instead started focusing it competing feature-for-feature.

Mozilla is the champion of the open web these days. Google started their proprietary NaCl and Dart projects because they claimed you couldn't make JavaScript any faster than it currently is. And now Mozilla is embarrassing them with emscripten and asm.js.

Re: Google Kills Its RSS Subscription Browser Extension Too

#19

Post by ricg » Sat, Mar 16, 2013, 1:06 PM UTC

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?

They like the site on Facebook and follow updates on their wall. That's what I noticed "non-technical" friends and family do.

Re: Google Kills Its RSS Subscription Browser Extension Too

#20

Post by MatthewPhillips » Sat, Mar 16, 2013, 1:07 PM UTC

cs702 wrote: post #13

Embrace, give away, extinguish: 1. Embrace [open web standard]. 2. Give away [standards-based product]. 3. Extinguish: if/after competition evaporates, discontinue product. Result: walled gardens.

Extend works fine here. Google product's are chock-full of extensions to open standards, which is why we have so many Gmail-only email clients floating around out there, etc.