[fooyc]

Google would do anything to make it harder for others to crawl the web. Killing RSS was part of that strategy.

News sites will implement these DRMs, but of course they will still allow Google because it is their source of traffic. Alternative search engines and good bots will be locked out.

[ghaff]

>Killing RSS was part of that strategy.

Oh please.

I get that it's more satisfying to blame Google than the faceless masses who had zero interest in RSS and who had a variety of alternatives to Reader in any case.

I guess they also had a strategy to kill social media by axing Google+ and user-created encyclopedias by killing Knol.

[fooyc]

Not only Reader, but also the RSS support in Chrome and Firefox (whose Google used to be the primary source of funds). And Feedburner.

[greiskul]

> Firefox (whose Google used to be the primary source of funds)

Google deal with Firefox was always about being the default search engine there, and that's it. They never had any power of cutting it adding features to the project.

[mrguyorama]

Officially, sure, but you shouldn't pretend that Google's funding isn't the main survival line for Mozilla as an entity, and that there isn't pressure there.

[scrum-treats]

Note: Brave (Chromium) has a RSS support. It's pretty good.

[LightBug1]

You can Oh please, but Google will never live that one down.

It'll live on in the history of the internet ... foreverrrrrrrrrrr.

[shiftpgdn]

Not just Google, Cloudflare is working hard on it too.

[xwdv]

Cloudflare works hard but Google works harder.

[intelVISA]

Honestly, credit to CF - for actual damage to the current internet they're pretty equal even if Google has had to work much harder for their share.

[numlock86]

> Killing RSS was part of that strategy.

Oh boy. RSS died because it was "only for nerds". Never had I ever met a person outside my tech bubble that had used RSS yet knew what it was. That's not how the average Joe uses the internet.