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The one wrinkle I can see is that a lot of podcasts (including my own) use Feedburner. While shutting down Reader directly affects the people who chose to use
by snoonan 14y ago
The one wrinkle I can see is that a lot of podcasts (including my own) use Feedburner. While shutting down Reader directly affects the people who chose to use it, shutting down Feedburner would disrupt a millions of innocent users. The end user just sees a great podcast go offline and subsequent firestorm of blaming Google. They'd be shutting down the customers of their customers, which seems a little more evil.
- derefr 14y agoThere's an underlying problem to that: RSS has no concept of a signal for "feed discontinued at this URL; use other located at <new URL>". At its simplest, this would just require RSS readers to understand 301 redirects and actually change their stored URL for the feed in response. (Well, that, and to not use feed URLs as primary keys, which I know some RSS clients are guilty of. ;)
- StavrosK 14y ago301, you mean, but I'd be surprised if RSS readers don't honor 301s. The RSS feed is served over HTTP, so it's not the job of the feed to specify its location. That's what "Moved permanently" is for.
- acdha 14y agoThis is exactly what almost every reader on the planet does, thanks to discussion and evangelism 5+ years ago
- derefr 14y agoDo they actually change what URL they have stored in their feed database, though? Or do they just follow the redirect each and every time they access the feed? It matters when the old server is eventually taken down. (Keeping in mind that while Cool URLs Don't Change, most servers and domains are managed by Uncool people.)
- pjbrunet 14y agoYou're assuming Google would reveal the source feed with a redirect. They could give us that information now, right in the feed, but they don't--I checked. So why would they change their policy after closing down the product?