[prepend]

I would guess that rss doesn’t show up in their JavaScript-driven web analytics so they mistakenly think no one uses it.

So they have some stupid conversation like “patching the rss code will take 5 units of labor, but I want to cyberdize the whoozit that also takes 5 units. Does anyone even care about rss and use it? Oh the analytics show zero. Let’s de prioritize that.”

I think the bigger problem is people on the team not using rss and knowing this is super dumb. And PMs now knowing the world their metrics don’t track.

Seems to kind with google once being great and now full of fat rich peoples’ kids just riding the slow and gradual suck. (Based on the theory that smart people have weak, pampered kids; then weak kids get destroyed by jerk fascists; then jerk fascists get overturned by smart people and the cycle completes).

Of course the dumb kids think they are geniuses because their parents are part. And the parents want to pretend their kids are smart. Etc etc

[passwordoops]

>they mistakenly think no one uses it.

No, I think it's a very deliberate choice. RSS is a means to escape the gaze of Big G. Can't let that happen

[aniforprez]

I have to imagine that for a chrome releases and developer updates blog that this has absolutely nothing to do with ensuring someone uses search or ads and more just plain priorities and no one bothering to add RSS after they upgraded the site. Occam's razor and all that

[prepend]

Or maybe they gaslight that as the reason. Their blog post talks about how they don’t have resources and they are prioritizing.

So I agree the real reason is that google doesnt want people using minimally tracked file downloads and thinks they can shovel people towards their more data rich analytics and content consumption.

[nameless912]

I think you're falling prey to Hanlon's Razor. What probably happened here is something approaching the following conversation:

$PM: Hey $ENGINEER, it looks like this "arr ess ess" thingy has very few users, do you know what it does?

$ENGINEER: Yeah, it's a web standard that publishes a feed of updates to our website. It's kind of neat actually, if you have an RSS read--

$PM (waving hands): okay skip the wikipedia article, that's fine; but does it generate revenue?

$ENGINEER (blinking): uh...no, it doesn't. Anyone can query our RSS feed and update their local cache of articles and read them later, it's actually really useful if you're ever somewhere without interne--

$PM: So we can't monetize this?

$ENGINEER: ...no, this is an RSS feed for a tech blog. We can't monetize this.

$PM: If you remove this and integrate $FEATURE on $PAID_SERVICE, I'll write you a better peer review this year. It's reducing tech debt right? This sounds like an old school thing anyway, I've never even heard of it!

$ENGINEER (heavy sigh): Yeah, whatever man.

[rollcat]

> I would guess that rss doesn’t show up in their JavaScript-driven web analytics so they mistakenly think no one uses it.

All it would take is ?utm_source=rss, but betcha readers would start stripping that, because once you've started abusing everything, anything will look like abuse.

[prepend]

I always include that stuff unless it breaks my experience.

Both to respect the publishers preferences and it’s easier to cut and paste rather than edit the clipboard.