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Google Shuts Down the Google Feed API
- luso_brazilian 10y agoFrom [1]: > What is the Google Feed API? > With the Feed API, you can download any public Atom, RSS, or Media RSS feed using only JavaScript, so you can mash up feeds with your content and other APIs with just a few lines of JavaScript. This makes it easy to quickly integrate feeds on your website. "To quickly integrate feeds on your website". The latest API deprecations and product removals (everywhere, not just at google) are part of what I believe to be a growing trend to take away the ability for the end users to be publishers and to bring them back to be passive consumers (like in the old radio / TV days). [1] https://developers.google.com/feed/ https://developers.google.com/feed/
- TeMPOraL 10y agoReminds me of a rant I read recently, on why Apple killed HyperCard. > The reason for this is that HyperCard is an echo of a different world. One where the distinction between the “use” and “programming” of a computer has been weakened and awaits near-total erasure. A world where the personal computer is a mind-amplifier, and not merely an expensive video telephone. A world in which Apple’s walled garden aesthetic has no place. > (...) > The Apple of Steve Jobs needed HyperCard-like products like the Monsanto Company needs a $100 home genetic-engineering set. http://www.loper-os.org/?p=568 http://www.loper-os.org/?p=568 Personally, I've lost my faith in Google, Apple and other "hip" IT companies long time ago. They feed us toys, instead of tools. Not sure if they do that on purpose or because they think Moloch/Market demands it, but they do so nonetheless.
- donkeyd 10y agoSerious question: Why would Apple then create Swift and Swift Playgrounds for iPad in order to get more people to program? Seems like they are giving us some tools.
- hvidgaard 10y agoThink of tools as apis to use and integrate existing services in their ecosystem into your own. A programming language is not that.
- chriswarbo 10y agoI'm not an iPad user, but hasn't Apple had a long-running policy of forbidding any app which includes an interpreter? I've seen this being mentioned for years by various programming communities (e.g. Squeak Smalltalk), where the only work around is to buy a Mac, buy OSX, buy the Apple developer tools ("Xcode"?) and pay a $99 subscription fee in order to transfer your own app to your own iPad.
- osxrand 10y agoI think your info is a bit outdated (and some incorrect). Buy a mac (or ignore the Eula and run OS X in a VM), install the dev tools (free), install the app on your iPad (free). If you want to publish, there's a fee (per year).
- eru 10y agoThey don't forbid interpreters. But they forbid downloading code into these interpreters. Ie running what the user types is OK. (At least as far as I remember.)
- deleted 10y ago[deleted]
- rdsnsca 10y agoYour free to down load code now, many of the interrperters come with build in support for version control now.
- masklinn 10y ago> I'm not an iPad user, but hasn't Apple had a long-running policy of forbidding any app which includes an interpreter? That policy was rescinded almost 6 years ago: http://daringfireball.net/2010/09/app_store_guidelines http://daringfireball.net/2010/09/app_store_guidelines and had been instituted only a few months earlier: http://daringfireball.net/2010/04/why_apple_changed_section_331 http://daringfireball.net/2010/04/why_apple_changed_section_... IIRC there's a policy against running downloaded code (at least automatically downloaded code) in anything but the bundled JS runtime, but bundling an interpreter in an application and running user-provided code is not an issue. You can run a Python app on iOS (e.g. via Kivy) and there are Python interpreters in the appstore. > buy the Apple developer tools ("Xcode"?) That's free (with a mac and OSX obviously): https://itunes.apple.com/app/xcode/id497799835 https://itunes.apple.com/app/xcode/id497799835 > and pay a $99 subscription fee in order to transfer your own app to your own iPad. The developer account is only necessary to publish in the store, since Xcode7 and iOS9 you can sideload applications with a regular appleid: http://www.howtogeek.com/230225/how-to-sideload-apps-onto-an-iphone-or-ipad-without-jailbreaking/ http://www.howtogeek.com/230225/how-to-sideload-apps-onto-an...
- deleted 10y ago[deleted]
- namikaze 10y agoThis is the downside of free services. They can be easy to get started. But will bite back when they go out. It has been hard to trust Google after they took reader down.
- solipsism 10y agoThat theory is nonsense. This API is a tiny thing compared to YouTube and Android app store, two services that provide publishing opportunities to millions.
- TeMPOraL 10y agoPublishing on third-party platform, with content limited to what those platforms allow, with monetization limited to what those platforms allow, with constant exposure to random nonsense DMCA takedowns. But I guess the primary culprits of limiting people's ability to be publishers are NATs.
- Godel_unicode 10y agoEven crappy home routers can port-fwd, the real barrier here is the ubiquitous (in America at least) prohibition on "hosting a server" on a residential internet connection.
- walterbell 10y agoHow does that work with WebRTC, e.g. as used in messaging apps?
- Godel_unicode 10y agoYou've lost me, what's the connection between "people's ability to be publishers" and WebRTC messaging apps? If you want to publish a WebRTC service, port forwarding will work fine and then you'll be bitten by the no servers restriction.
- walterbell 10y agoA messaging app doesn't have to require port forwarding, it can use a central server to broker the connection between endpoints. In that scenario, the "server" is on the internet, not the residential connection, but data comes from the endpoints.
- Jaruzel 10y agoIs that all it does? I'm sure there are other services out there that do exactly this. Does anyone know of any?
- Turing_Machine 10y agoWriting a system that (correctly) interprets the zillion flavors of "RSS" out there and presents them with a common API is non-trivial. An 80% solution is pretty easy, and a 90% solution isn't that hard, but a near-100% solution will take you into some very dark and ugly places. I don't know of any service that does this as well as the Google Feed API did. If someone else does, please share.
- allendoerfer 10y agoWell, start the service, state you use RSS library X and that you will keep it updated and send people over to it for bug reports and contributions.
- Jaruzel 10y agoAh but RSS is a standard, so where's the problem? One method to recode them all surely? I jest, I'm the author of http://www.weegeeks.com http://www.weegeeks.com - I know only TOO well, how there is no such thing as a 'standard' RSS feed... (sigh) So yeah, I get your point.
- reubano 10y agoCheck out riko [1]. It was developed to programmatically replicate Yahoo Pipes (without the UI). But as it stands, I'm pretty sure it can do most of what google feeds does. [1] https://github.com/nerevu/riko https://github.com/nerevu/riko (full disclosure: I'm the lead dev.)
- julien 10y agoSuperfeedr https://blog.superfeedr.com/google-feeds-api-welcome/ https://blog.superfeedr.com/google-feeds-api-welcome/
- RamenJunkie_ 10y agoSounds kind of like Yahoo Pipes. Is that still around?
- johnnyo 10y agoGoogle really hates RSS, don't they? They seem to be actively killing anything that they have that once supported it
- sp8 10y agoI know, I'm just waiting for the day they announce the shutdown of FeedBurner. That's going to create a LOT of broken feeds if they do...
- avian 10y agoHere's a theory: Google kills Reader. Not because they hate RSS, but because they want to drive people to Google+ or some other unrelated reason. Web at large understands this move as a sign that Google doesn't see a future for RSS feeds. Old websites start pushing alternative things (used to be Twitter, Facebook, now newsletters and mailing lists). New websites launch without feeds. Google sees lack of interest in the rest of its services connected to RSS feeds and starts shutting them down as well.
- spriggan3 10y agoIs there any alternative API ? This one was quite handy for RSS feed discovery.
- reubano 10y agoSee my comment above [1]. Also view a list of alternatives here [2 - 4]. [1] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=12016815 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=12016815 [2] http://www.makeuseof.com/tag/12-best-yahoo-pipes-alternatives-look/ http://www.makeuseof.com/tag/12-best-yahoo-pipes-alternative... [3] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=9662035 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=9662035 [4] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=9667004 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=9667004
- onion2k 10y agoGoogle need to learn that providing a free service and then retracting it is quite damaging to their reputation. I know many developers who are incredibly reluctant to build on Google APIs because the danger of them being shut down feels high. However, interest and use of the API has waned over time, and it is running on API infrastructure that is now two generations old at Google. I wonder if there's a correlation between the downturn in interest in RSS and Google Reader being closed.
- TeMPOraL 10y ago> However, interest and use of the API has waned over time, and it is running on API infrastructure that is now two generations old at Google. That's funny. This is software, not nuclear reactor maintenance. It costs very little to let old software run, especially in case of a Google-sized company. If beancounters complain, then budget it as a marketing expense!
- solipsism 10y agoLittle to keep the API running indefinitely, but not the infrastructure.
- TeMPOraL 10y agoI meant both, actually. Keeping the API running == keeping its infrastructure running. And I can't imagine this costs them very much.
- solipsism 10y agoYou imagine wrong, it takes teams of people to keep running the infrastructure that Google is built on. And keeping running infrastructure that's multiple generations old is wasteful. What you should be arguing is that it's worth it for Google to port the API to current infrastructure. But porting it is not as simple as saying "Leave it up!"
- fixermark 10y ago
- bhaak 10y agoI'm confused about the use case of the Google Feed API. It let's you download a feed by Javascript. But why is this a web service? Is there no Javascript framework that does the same without having to roundtrip to an external service?
- deno 10y agoThey also stored longer history for feeds than what you get by fetching it yourself. https://developers.google.com/feed/v1/reference#includeHistoricalEntries https://developers.google.com/feed/v1/reference#includeHisto...
- pjmlp 10y agoNo, because JavaScript is not allowed to contact multiple hosts other than the one where the page was downloaded from or Cross-origin resource sharing is enabled.
- wineisfine 10y agoGoogle, making the web less transparent one day at a time. And meanwhile they complain Facebook is eating the open web, while they're dismantling it themselves
- TeMPOraL 10y agoEmbrace, Extend, Extinguish? I.e. we wouldn't care about Google shutting down another useful product if we weren't allowing ourselves to be dependent on it in the first place.
- nabla9 10y agoGoogle is throwing new API's without commitment and trying to find if one of them becomes popular. This is good way to limit the risk. Developers wait to see if Google commits to API before fully adopting it. This is good way to limit the risk.
- cm3 10y agoI would only use a Google, Microsoft, _whoever_ API if I was paid for integrating and maintaining it. I would never rely on such a thing in a personal project/venture. Time and again paid and free web services are getting shut down without a replacement. The reputation is already such that nobody can trust a service to be there in 2 years. Another reason to build more decentralized solutions while we can. I was delighted to read that Berners-Lee and Cerf advocated just that recently.
- Aissen 10y agoYou mean like Parse was paid for ? It's not necessarily a silver bullet.
- kowdermeister 10y agoRelying on third parties is never safe. I think these services are great for fast prototyping, but eventually you should move on to build your own stuff.
- TeMPOraL 10y agoI agree. We need a shift away from the whole SaaS idea. It plays nicely with ultra-short-term market thinking, so people buy into that, but it is bad long-term. Any service you use is giving away control to a third party. It's true in life as well. Some services are easily replaceable - if the barber shop next to you closes down, there's always another few streets away. But some services are not so easily replaceable, and it's the case of most of them on-line due to the very bad state of software-software integration (i.e. having people to write complicated translation layers). If you depend on such services for your business and they decide to shut down, you're screwed. If we want to move computing forward, we need more products and less services. More software that one can download and host themselves.
- michaelbuckbee 10y agoFor lots of businesses the choice isn't between SAAS and download+install, but SAAS and not having an app at all. It's a real cost+risk to maintain, update, secure, backup and troubleshoot an application internally and in most bottom line terms is less expensive as a SAAS than an internal application.
- coldcode 10y agoThey need to make a Google Shuts Down ___ API. Every time you call it, something else gets shut down.
- TeMPOraL 10y agoI think we need to make a SV Drinking Game. You drink one whenever Google shuts down an API or a service. You drink one whenever someone says we're in a bubble. You drink one whenever Techcrunch writes another X is Uber/AirBnB for Y article. You drink two whenever we get another unicorn. etc.
- robocaptain 10y agoDoes anyone have a good replacement for this? I somehow missed the original announcement and am now realizing that I'm one of those (apparently few) people who actually does use the API.
- reubano 10y agoSee my comment above [1]. Also view a list of alternatives here [2 - 4]. [1] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=12016815 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=12016815 [2] http://www.makeuseof.com/tag/12-best-yahoo-pipes-alternatives-look/ http://www.makeuseof.com/tag/12-best-yahoo-pipes-alternative... [3] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=9662035 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=9662035 [4] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=9667004 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=9667004
- Animats 10y agoAs I pointed out last time, RSS for real news is doing fine. RSS for social crap is dead. Space News has an RSS feed.[2] The Senate Democrats have an RSS feed covering what's happening on the Senate floor.[3] (The GOP discontinued their feed.[4]) The House Energy and Commerce Committee has a feed with markup in embedded JSON.[5] Not sure what's going on there. Even The Hollywood Reporter has an RSS feed.[6] So for real news, RSS is in good shape. RSS seems to be doing fine for sources that have something important to say. [1] http://feeds.reuters.com/reuters/topNews http://feeds.reuters.com/reuters/topNews [2] http://spacenews.com/feed/ http://spacenews.com/feed/ [3] https://democrats.senate.gov/feed/ https://democrats.senate.gov/feed/ [4] http://www.gop.gov/static/index.php http://www.gop.gov/static/index.php [5] https://energycommerce.house.gov/rss.xml?GroupTypeID=1 https://energycommerce.house.gov/rss.xml?GroupTypeID=1 [6] http://feeds.feedburner.com/thr/news http://feeds.feedburner.com/thr/news
- julien 10y agoNot too late to consider a switch to Superfeedr https://blog.superfeedr.com/google-feeds-api-welcome/ https://blog.superfeedr.com/google-feeds-api-welcome/