[jmesserly]

> Maybe I'm just being a curmudgeon, but I think Google is playing the same 'embrace and extend' card as Microsoft did back in the day, just for slightly different reasons.

I see this meme a lot, but I don't get it how the analogy is supposed to work.

There is actual evidence that Microsoft in the 90's was trying to sabotage standard protocols and open source software, e.g. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Halloween_Documents.

The key part of "embrace, extend, and extinguish" strategy was extending the standard in proprietary ways, thus making it incompatible and no longer implementable via open source software, thus killing it.

I don't get how any of this applies to any web company, where nearly the entire business is based on the web and the standards that back it. It's no wonder that many of these companies contribute back to the web standards and open source software. Sure, these contributions are in the company's interests--but that's the whole point. We reached a time when it's in interests of many big (and small) corporations to contribute to open source and standards (including Microsoft!).

Some people see efforts to improve standards or contribute new ones as somehow bad, "embrace and extend". When actually it's the opposite: investing in the commons to promote its welfare.

Obligatory disclaimer: speaking for myself here, not any employer past or present.

[duncan_bayne]

... except where it isn't in their interests, which is why Google is trying to kill off RSS with a multi-pronged strategy (ignore RSS in Chromium, kill off RSS reader, don't offer an RSS feed in G+).

If your platform is free-as-in-beer, you have to monetise your users to advertisers. You do this by learning more about them by keeping them within your ecosystem, not by allowing them access to your platform through open protocols.

I see it as a fundamental conflict between users of a system (you and me) and the customers (advertisers). Google has made it clear which side of that equation they care about. See e.g. their support of DRM in HTML.

[magicalist]

Not only would that be a pretty poor multi-pronged strategy, it still has absolutely nothing to do with "embrace, extend, and extinguish", as the parent pointed out.

And, seriously, "ignore RSS in Chromium" is now kowtowing to advertisers? How about the lack of gopher support[1]? And no built in bittorrent client[2]??

I'm starting to agree with others that you have a point somewhere in here but you're missing it over anger about Reader.

[1] https://code.google.com/p/chromium/issues/detail?id=11345

[2] https://code.google.com/p/chromium/issues/detail?id=182399

[duncan_bayne]

Not exactly embrace and extend like MS did it, but similar in spirit: take an open protocol, embrace it for a while, gradually weaken it over time in favour of a parallel closed system, then once everyone is happily using it, kill it dead and watch the migration into the closed system.

If I had to guess, I'd say that torrent support was nixed for fear of offending Big Content; Opera has already showed that it's reasonable for a browser to support it. Also there's already a plugin for that protocol, so it may just be a low priority for the team. Odd that they flagged the request 'invalid' though.

(Please stop telling me that I'm angry about Reader. It's not that I'm angry: I've identified what I think is a pattern in Google's behaviour, figured out what their end goal is, and it troubles me. So I'm abandoning their platform to the greatest extent practical.)

[magicalist]

That's not similar in spirit to "embrace, extend, and extinguish", and not even a good description of what they've done. There's no migration path from Reader to G+ (presuming that's what you mean by "the closed system"). There's not even a clear correspondence between the content in each, and meanwhile Google does provide a migration path to other RSS readers.

I think there is a clear argument for Google consolidating around APIs and their social network instead of federated protocols in the future. However, the whole "strategy to kill off RSS" thing is silly and undermines the other arguments you're making.

The bittorrent and gopher comments were facetious. It's not at all clear that all browsers should have a button that appears when a page has an RSS feed and, when pressed, opens a different web page to then enter the address of that RSS feed into your reader. Zawinski's Law was not meant as praise.

The lack of that RSS button is no more evidence of trying to kill RSS than the lack of gopher support is evidence of Google's plot to make sure that Gopher will never rise again like a phoenix and supplant the World Wide Web once and for all. Instead, you make sure extensions are able to build that button for those that want it (or put an option to enable it in about:config) and you call it a day.