How Google helped destroy adoption of RSS feeds (2023)(openrss.org)
549 points by pudgywalsh 18 hours ago | 192 comments
tl;dr: Google repeatedly built RSS support into major products (Chrome, FeedBurner, Google Reader, Google Alerts, Google News) to attract users, then stripped out or killed that support once users were locked in—most notably shutting down Google Reader in 2013 and ending Google News RSS in 2017. The author argues this "embrace, extend, extinguish" pattern eroded user confidence in RSS and drove mass abandonment of the protocol, despite Google having benefited significantly from the open web standard.
HN Discussion:
  • Nostalgia for the pre-walled-garden internet and lamenting ad-driven web design
  • ~RSS is not dead and remains easy to support for developers and platforms
  • Google's stated reasons for killing Reader were dishonest, especially given Google+ push
  • Users shouldn't have relied on Google in the first place; good alternatives exist
  • RSS declined because it's hard to monetize with ads and hard to explain to average users