How Google helped destroy adoption of RSS feeds (2023) • Hacker News Board

Re: How Google helped destroy adoption of RSS feeds (2023)

#61

Post by user3939382 » Sat, Aug 01, 2026, 10:11 PM UTC

throwaway63467 wrote: post #48

The Internet in the early 2000s felt a little more special as compared to today, when 99.999 % of content is locked in a handful of walled gardens. I mean sure everything we had then is still possible but let’s be honest everything about the web is fine tuned to deliver ads to our eyeballs, browsers, operating systems and even protocols are being designed with ad delivery in mind. Even the privacy friendly browsers j…

> the privacy friendly browsers just exist to serve ads when I think about it

Not LibreWolf. I’m also a fan of ungoogled-chromium, those are my two daily browsers.

Re: How Google helped destroy adoption of RSS feeds (2023)

#62

Post by salynchnew » Sat, Aug 01, 2026, 10:17 PM UTC

I mean, Facebook acquiring FriendFeed felt at least as bad as Google shutting down Google Reader.

Re: How Google helped destroy adoption of RSS feeds (2023)

#63

Post by fiatpandas » Sat, Aug 01, 2026, 10:21 PM UTC

It makes me think if YouTube’s subscription feed will meet the same fate as RSS. It’s basically RSS for YouTube, in the sense that it’s a chronological feed of channels you directly follow.

It just seems too useful and un-derived to remain a Google-maintained feature for the long term.

Re: How Google helped destroy adoption of RSS feeds (2023)

#64

Post by cft » Sat, Aug 01, 2026, 10:23 PM UTC

fiatpandas wrote: post #63

It makes me think if YouTube’s subscription feed will meet the same fate as RSS. It’s basically RSS for YouTube, in the sense that it’s a chronological feed of channels you directly follow. It just seems too useful and un-derived to remain a Google-maintained feature for the long term.

No, because it's not cross platform, it doesn't take you outside of a Google product

Re: How Google helped destroy adoption of RSS feeds (2023)

#65

Post by logn » Sat, Aug 01, 2026, 10:24 PM UTC

And they shut down Google Podcasts, migrating it to YouTube Music. The podcast ecosystem is open and RSS-based. YouTube Music is closed.

Re: How Google helped destroy adoption of RSS feeds (2023)

#66

Post by orzi » Sat, Aug 01, 2026, 10:26 PM UTC

delduca wrote: post #53

dabinat wrote: post #29

I don’t understand why many sites with news updates / blogs don’t offer an RSS feed. Are they expecting me to keep visiting the site over and over to see if there is new content? They’re guaranteeing I’ll never visit their site again. Perhaps they’re expecting people to subscribe to social media accounts or via email, but those both cost money to reach users. RSS is free.

Ironically HN don’t have feed…

Not true. https://news.ycombinator.com/rss

Re: How Google helped destroy adoption of RSS feeds (2023)

#67

Post by wildzzz » Sat, Aug 01, 2026, 10:32 PM UTC

deepsun wrote: post #38

bakemawaytoys wrote: post #7

Google’s obviously fake excuse for killing their RSS reader (declining usage) was especially maddening at the time because they were pushing Google+ - which _nobody_ used.

Same thing with Google Music, it was perfect. You could stream, or could buy and download mp3, or you could upload your library to it. And the best feature: "I am feeling lucky" -- play a random song you ever liked and keep playing a generated playlist off it. But they killed it due to internal wars with YouTube Music that sucks. There's still nothing like Google Music.

Google Music's song radio feature was really good. It would play similar songs obviously but it exposed you to actually new artists. Meanwhile, spotify basically encourages you to listen to the same stuff all the time, It's like listening to my old CD collection.