TECH Signal 301
How Google helped destroy adoption of RSS feeds (2023)
↗
Engineers who build on open web protocols face real risk when a dominant platform adopts and then abandons those standards, as Google did repeatedly with RSS. This pattern—removing browser-native RSS buttons, shutting down Google Reader, degrading FeedBurner, and eliminating RSS from Google Alerts—demonstrates how platform decisions can undermine open protocols that independent developers and publishers depend on. Note: this analysis comes from a single source.
Written by elseif from the cluster below · every claim links back to a sourceThe three things worth knowing
Google removed the built-in RSS button from Chromium without notice or explanation, making feed discovery harder for everyday browser users.
Google shut down Google Reader in 2013 and progressively degraded FeedBurner (including removing APIs in 2012 and core services in 2022), eliminating two of the most widely used RSS tools without offering replacements.
Google removed RSS delivery from Google Alerts and killed its own RSS browser extension, reversing course on both only after user backlash—by which point many users had already abandoned RSS altogether.
THE CLUSTER