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> but capturing RSS and then shutting it off

... what? Ultra, ultra hyperbole much? I get it, shutting down reader sucked, but seriously you can literally use any RSS reader to read feeds. Google didn't "kill RSS".

Seriously, voicing opinions is one thing but fear mongering and hyperbole is another and this article leans far too heavily towards the latter.




I stopped following the author's site many years ago because I found myself too angry too often at the things he writes.


I'm not a big RSS guy, but when I read an article on that before, what I understand happened is:

1. RSS readers everywhere

2. Google comes out with one

3. Other RSS readers wither on the vine b/c everyone uses #2

4. Google decides to sunset their RSS reader.

5. ???

Is that wrong?


Yep, not what happened. Google didn't make one; they acquired one. Google sunset that reader (I'll agree that in retrospect it was the wrong move, but regardless), but at no point did RSS readers stop existing. Two notes:

- RSS readers are _dead simple_ to build. If you're an average programmer you could make an MVP within 2 days.

- Many of the RSS readers are/were free. I don't think Google having Reader caused any great migrations, but even if it did I doubt it would have caused other readers to implode or anything like that.

I _believe_ what happened is that Reader had a small but vocal user group who were (understandably) upset at the sunsetting, and caused a big hubbub about it. I _suspect_ many of today's Reader complainers have never actually used Reader, and are just piggy-backing off some low-hanging Google bashing fruit.

Again, I'll happily nod at the badness of Google killing off Reader, but I intensely dislike the amount of hyperbole in the statement that Google "killed RSS". It's a thing that never took off. That's all that happened. It's still accessible, there are many clients you could use, and so on - it just so happens that most sites don't bother creating an RSS feed.




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