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Comments (142)

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  throwaway63467
  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 just exist to serve ads when I think about it. Kind of sad really, but I guess you could be happy as it’s so big now and there’s so much to do. Just makes you wonder what stuff would thrive if ads didn’t exist. As of now every niche thing that gets successful will be invariably pulled into the ad ecosystem as it’s very hard to say no to money.RSS wasn’t in the interest of the big platforms as it’s decentralized and there’s no good way to deliver ads through it, simple as that.
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  bakemawaytoys
  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.
• schappim
  Google tried to kill RSS, but it is not dead, in fact it is still a huge part of the Open Web Initiative. There is no performance hit or real resource cost in supporting RSS. If big platforms like Shopify can do it, we can support RSS feeds (and more) too! I've recently added RSS and other alternative representations to our Rails based ecom store[1] and rails makes it super easy[1a].If you're using Rails it is basically free to add RSS feeds w/ the 'feed' or 'rss' gems[2]. Because of this we provide RSS feeds for everything, including customer orders and their tracking.If you want to support the Open Web Initiative[3], I'd also encourage you to support alternative representations[4] of your content (markdown, CSVs, etc), add support for ActivityPub / Fediverse directly and webhooks to your site/app.Stay open!1. https://littlebirdelectronics.com.au/help/atom-feeds 2. https://github.com/ruby/rss 3. https://littlebirdelectronics.com.au/open-web 4. https://guides.rubyonrails.org/v5.0/layouts_and_rendering.ht...
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  betenoire
  Google Reader going away felt like the beginning of the end the internet as I knew it. I miss websites
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  orzi
  Don't forget Mozilla removing Live Bookmarks (RSS feeds showed up directly in your bookmarks menu) and RSS feed subscriptions in Firefox 64.https://www.gijsk.com/blog/2018/10/firefox-removes-core-prod...
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  konsalexee
  Just why bother relying on Google products for RSS?I use for the last many years NetNewsWire and have never had any problems reading the news I want to read.For ref: https://github.com/Ranchero-Software/NetNewsWire
• arjie
  I think centralized social networks were going to dominate in the end. There's just too much of an advantage to going to HN. There's a lot of content and a user-filter pushes the best stuff to the top in a way that you don't get from other feeds.
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  dabinat
  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.
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  GrayHerring
  I think the core issue is that it is hard to sell why you need an RSS, especially for the average user. It would not be uncommon to meet an IT professional who has at best heard the term, but never really tried to delve further. Sadly by the time the average internet dweller hears of RSS, their mind is already so ingrained in the "usual" browsing experience that anything that is out of the ordinary feels instinctively wrong, even if it clearly has multiple merits.
• encrypted_bird
  Fun Fact: Most, if not all, YouTube channels automatically have an RSS feed. That's what I use to follow channels I like. No Google account necessary.
• 0xDEAFBEAD
  Interestingly I think Google's mishandling of RSS created an opening for Substack, which famously allows authors to export their mailing list at any time.
• logn
  And they shut down Google Podcasts, migrating it to YouTube Music. The podcast ecosystem is open and RSS-based. YouTube Music is closed.
• AlexAplin
  Feeds still have a lot of inertia, at least. Most blogs generate them out of the box, and Wordpress being as predominant as it still is means you can still find them even where you don't expect to. Even social media profiles can compress into feeds with a little help from solutions like Nitter (or in Bluesky's case, offered natively). What I think is really missed is the social component that Reader had, which you still can't really find even with the variety of great readers that came in its wake.I know I will probably just migrate them to RSSHub when the time calls, but YouTube's channel and playlist feeds have been such a great way to follow a large number of creators. I'm still holding my breath for the day they unceremoniously stop working.
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  mattsimpson
  You never know what will be someone's straw-that-broke-the-camels-back moment, but this was it for me. Nothing in this post was new news, but despite that, seeing it written down in one place made me realize just the type of person, I mean company, that you are and what you really want, Google. For too long I've been holding on to the "do no evil" person, I mean company, that you once were. But now it's clear to me... you're a toxic friend. We've been drifting apart for years, but now it's official... we're breaking up. I'm sure there's a person, I mean company, out there for me. One that will treat me right, be good to me, and respect me as a person and I'm going to find it.
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  gkoberger
  Okay bear with me here.We blame the RSS aggregators for the death, which is very fair. But I don't know if blog writers ever supported RSS, either.With RSS, your words are read, which is great. But you lose the ability to control the feel of the post... the best blogs have a vibe where the medium is at least large portion of the message. A pg essay would feel wrong in a chunk serif font, and I've read blogs that have used interactivity to great effect. RSS also kills monetization, since you can't have ads or push users to sign up.I would love to see a platform (mobile would be great for this) that let the creator control the design and maybe even levels of monetization. (Some could argue I'm somewhat describing Medium or Substack, although I don't think they quite hit it for me.)I could never get into RSS. I theoretically loved it as a concept, but I missed "feeling" the vibe the author was going for.
• ramijames
  I'm still so angry about this. RSS was EVERYWHERE and then it just wasn't anymore. It was so useful and such a nice, advertising-free way, of using the internet.
• jll29
  Let's make sure Ladybird will have good RSS and Atom feed support, then that'll settle things.
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  monksy
  What did Google benefit from killing rss? Seems like that would help engagement on the web in general.
• Alien1Being
  I miss the days of intelligent discussions on comp.arch.John Mashey would pipe in with old_systems_guy@yahoo.com (John Mashey) "I repeat the old proverb:"Money can buy bandwidth, but latency is forever.""https://yarchive.net/comp/latency.htmlTerge Mathiesen with brilliant asides like<Terje.Mathisen "almost all programming can be viewed as an exercise in caching" and with surprising insights into bisection bandwidth.Intelligent discussions now happen on closed forums. My people have moved to mailing lists like arch-general@lists.archlinux.org, or behind authentication firewalls in professional societies.The public internet is now populated by the sort of people I devotedly avoid in real life...These days most of the high quality material I read is on Anna's Archive.
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  ashu1461
  Was evolution of email newsletters also one major reason ? Email newsletters are more publisher friendly where they get your data (emails), understand how many people are opening your email, sell subscriptions as well.
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  tripleee
  I'm visiting this exact thread from an RSS feed.. it's there and great to use
• firasd
  I think the real issue is that the 'hobbyist web' is dead because there is no distributionLet's say you want to post about 'best way to clean your car windshield'. Why would you post it on a blog when nobody will read it when the TikTok algo will at least give you a pity test to a few hundred peopleSo all that's left is Reddit and social media and the short form video apps (and Youtube)The other part of course is Google itself won't rank mypersonalblog .com/i-found-a-cool-way-to-clean-windshieldsSo there's a doom loop... the supply of potential independent sites can't connect to audience demand, the audience is not being funneled to indie sites anyway ¯\_(ツ)_/¯ And now Reddit gets to make much dinero out of selling access for AI training cause that's the only place organic discussion happens at scale
• delduca
  Not sure if true, but said thousands times on HN. The reason to kill google reader was some trouble upgrading dependencies on it (borg)
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  fiatpandas
  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.
• LIMEVINCE
  Google had announced RSS support for Chrome back in 2021 and by the time this article was written in 2023 people were still waiting...
• smusamashah
  When chrome took the stage, it was the only popular browser that didn't display rss feeds XML in a readable way. It still does not to this day.
• ralfd
  That is stupid ranting.RSS (and Atom) were too nerdy and the mainstream did and does not care for it. Google did not „destroy“ it
• Animats
  This is why Google's browser business needs to be separated from Google's search business, as illegal vertical integration under antitrust law.
• Xracke
  With integration of AI , RSS feeds is the future
• renegat0x0
  i still use feeds oftenhttps://github.com/rumca-js/awesome-database-feedsoften using my crawling server because rss are often protected against botshttps://github.com/rumca-js/crawler-buddy
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  grigio
  RSS is still alive yarr is fantastic
• topham
  Have you seen the spec for RSS?I've vomited better things.The spec is a horrible mash up and seriously needed refinement. It made it easy to kill
• anon
  undefined
• Telaneo
  Never forget.
• pipeline_peak
  It’s not Google’s responsibility to put RSS into their products.The only point the author made that fits the title is what they did to FeedBurner.
• tim-projects
  Facebook IMO was more culpable.
• anon
  undefined
• anon
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• anon
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• salynchnew
  I mean, Facebook acquiring FriendFeed felt at least as bad as Google shutting down Google Reader.
• Kuyawa
  Oh come on, what's next? How Microsoft helped destroy Visual FoxPro?Time goes on, things evolve, or are not monetizable so they're soon forgotten, or replaced, or improved, or... look a new shiny thing!
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  amazingamazing
  RSS was never going to work anyway due to lack of monetization. If this is not true you would still see them today. See everyone posting archive paywall bypassing links on every opportunity here, lol. There is no incentive for a news site to support RSS.
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  LightBug1
  Yeah, fuck Google for all of this.That's my intellectually considered response.Fuck Google.
• EtienneDeLyon
  [dead]
• shevy-java
  This is the Company of Pure Evil.Whatever it touches, it destroys - excluding adMoney. That's its only soul.What I have also noticed is that people are no longer happy to say "I worked at Google". It's now more a career killer (to some extent) than an accelerator.Anyone remember Google+? Nobody used it but Google tried to force-abuse people into using it.