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I don't know what people mean when they say RSS is a dead technology, but it solves a problem for which I know no other solution: reading blogs or other website

I don't know what people mean when they say RSS is a dead technology, but it solves a problem for which I know no other solution: reading blogs or other websites that are very rarely updated and are about unpopular topics. If a website only has new content every few months on average, I don't want to visit it manually: if I visit to often I waste my time, if I try to visit infrequently I'm likely to forget about the website. I definitely want to know when its been updated before visiting. If it were one some popular topic I could probably find out about it from social media, but if it has a narrow readership this is less likely.

hugofirth 14y ago
You are right I suppose - perhaps then my analogy would be better suited to describing RSS as a niche technology. The issue is that niche technologies work in conjunction with a paid business model. Google's core business model is that of mass market and driving eyeballs to ads. Reader did not fit within the confines of their model any more.
- taligent 14y ago
  Google's core business model is that of mass market and driving eyeballs to ads. Reader did not fit within the confines of their model any more. So we should all look forward to Keep, Drive, Maps, Docs, Now, Glasses, Self Driving Cars and their many other products being discontinued sometime soon ?
  - hugofirth 14y ago
    If they are not successful then yes. That is exactly what I am saying. However by choosing Google's most popular products your point is both self defeating and an exercise in "reductio ad absurdum". Maps is an area of core competency for Google, has huge commercial implications and is a dependency of many other products. Maps is as safe as anything bar Search. Drive (and by extension Docs and Keep because they all form part of the same umbrella product) is an attempt by Google to compete for the traditional Corporate business stamping Grounds of MS. It also has an API. It would be reasonable to assume that Google will continue to support Drive for at least a long as it has relevance in this area. As For Glasses and Self Driving Cars - the only products on your list to which your point could sensibly apply - YES. If they do not work. If nobody (and by nobody I mean insufficient volume. A few thousand early adopters is nobody in the numbers of Google) uses them then they would be deemed a failure. In this case it would be clear that that product was not quite what the market wanted at that time - Google should absolutely shut it down in order to continue to innovate and experiment. Heres the thing: Its still a good thing that these experiments happen at all! One of the great adages of science is that negative results are still results.

hugofirth 14y ago

You are right I suppose - perhaps then my analogy would be better suited to describing RSS as a niche technology. The issue is that niche technologies work in conjunction with a paid business model. Google's core business model is that of mass market and driving eyeballs to ads. Reader did not fit within the confines of their model any more.

taligent 14y ago
Google's core business model is that of mass market and driving eyeballs to ads. Reader did not fit within the confines of their model any more. So we should all look forward to Keep, Drive, Maps, Docs, Now, Glasses, Self Driving Cars and their many other products being discontinued sometime soon ?
- hugofirth 14y ago
  If they are not successful then yes. That is exactly what I am saying. However by choosing Google's most popular products your point is both self defeating and an exercise in "reductio ad absurdum". Maps is an area of core competency for Google, has huge commercial implications and is a dependency of many other products. Maps is as safe as anything bar Search. Drive (and by extension Docs and Keep because they all form part of the same umbrella product) is an attempt by Google to compete for the traditional Corporate business stamping Grounds of MS. It also has an API. It would be reasonable to assume that Google will continue to support Drive for at least a long as it has relevance in this area. As For Glasses and Self Driving Cars - the only products on your list to which your point could sensibly apply - YES. If they do not work. If nobody (and by nobody I mean insufficient volume. A few thousand early adopters is nobody in the numbers of Google) uses them then they would be deemed a failure. In this case it would be clear that that product was not quite what the market wanted at that time - Google should absolutely shut it down in order to continue to innovate and experiment. Heres the thing: Its still a good thing that these experiments happen at all! One of the great adages of science is that negative results are still results.