[redwall_hp]

The funny thing is...non-Google browsers had even done that. Chrome was the odd one that didn't, and Firefox was still more popular at the time.

Firefox had Live Bookmarks, which I used for a long time. You'd just drag the icon to your bookmarks toolbar and then it would appear as a folder containing all of the entries as clickable bookmarks to the relevant web pages. The browser alerted you to autodiscovered feeds as well. The orange RSS pictogram (not the initialization) would appear right there in the URL bar if the site was set up right.

As early as OS X 10.4, desktop Safari had a built in RSS reader as well. You'd open the sidebar that's currently mostly used for the reading list and bookmarks, and there was some way to add the current page's discovered RSS feed with a button click or two. It also rendered feed XML in a particularly nice way that looked like a very clean looking blog, so landing on an XML page wouldn't intimidate less technical users.

Chrome deliberately was dysfunctional, and it taking over probably had more to do with RSS not growing more mainstream (as well as the rise of social networks and over commercialization) than Google Reader shutting down.