[bArray]

> Google has an interest in our depending on Google to find stuff, so of course they see RSS as a threat.

But they historically had several feed systems [1] [2] which were fully under their control.

> Cue some "googler" show up defending this move and how it makes the world better.

Of course. 'We have a better system that uses 2FA to securely text you every ten minutes to generate a code that, in combination with a 16 character unicode password, allows you to check whether Google approved content has been updated.'

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/IGoogle

[2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Google_Reader

[rcMgD2BwE72F]

You forgot Feedburner that Google used to monetized feeds. Almost all bloggers I followed in Google Reader used it to track and monetize. Google had a lot of control over RSS.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/FeedBurner

[PaulHoule]

I don't know how it is know but when I was doing a lot of SEO publishing 10 years ago Feedburner was the best kept secret.

People would always be complaining that Google wouldn't index their pages for months but if you: (1) burn an RSS feed, (2) subscribe to the burned feed, and (3) add items to the feed, the items would be indexed almost immediately.

[sertbdfgbnfgsd]

> But they historically had several feed systems [1] [2] which were fully under their control.

I don't think Google's fear is who's in control of any one particular RSS. I think Google's fear is what if people realize that, for the purposes of subscribing to updates from a source, RSS is objectively better than Google. They're afraid of losing the mindshare of being the unquestionably better option for everything.