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Chrome never implemented RSS auto discovery. Everyone else has a "walled garden" why must Google be different? and why should they - arguably the least “walled

by yanw 13y ago

Chrome never implemented RSS auto discovery. Everyone else has a "walled garden" why must Google be different? and why should they - arguably the least “walled” of said gardens - suffer the "openness" brunt? The fact that they are not investing in RSS tools doesn't mean they're against them, it's just not in their interest anymore, and so I come to the conclusion that this is yet another Google Reader lament, and I thought we've already had our fill of these on the HN front page. It’s the same discussion all over again, If you've not found a Reader replacement by now, or at least had your eyes on a couple of replacement candidates then you're just being stubborn. Google lets you export your feeds and that is why they are not "evil", not because they refuse to indefinitely maintain a service that isn't of interest to them. Also the crux or that post is an opt in feature that you have to install as a browser extension, if you don't like it then avoid the extension, but then how is it any different than Facebook's 'like' buttons or any of the other social widgets that are cluttering the web?!

ianstormtaylor 13y ago
It's not different, but what the article should have made you realize is how broken (or, if not broken, just fucked up) the system is if the average user (and even higher-than-average users) don't realize how all of these little pieces of the web are eroding their privacy.
jmillikin 13y ago
> Chrome never implemented RSS auto discovery. Chrome has an official extension for RSS auto-discovery: https://chrome.google.com/webstore/detail/rss-subscription-extensio/nlbjncdgjeocebhnmkbbbdekmmmcbfjd?hl=en https://chrome.google.com/webstore/detail/rss-subscription-e... The Chrome team argues that not enough people use RSS to justify having an icon in the URL bar by default. I personally think this is somewhat circular reasoning ("People don't use RSS, so we won't show an icon letting them know about RSS"), but sadly other browsers such as Firefox have followed their lead and removed RSS notifications by default. Also, whether or not the browser implements native RSS auto-discovery is irrelevant to the point of the article. The Chrome extension in the article could be easily implemented by checking for a special <link> element, so that no URLs need to be sent back to Google just to know that the page is Plus-enabled. However, off the top of my head, there's a good reason why this wouldn't do much good. The advertised functionality of the Google+ extension requires details about the Google+ stream that the page links to. If the extension checked for a <link>, it would still need to send the URL in that link to Google to get those stream details. The privacy improvement seems marginal. In the end, I think this complaint is better served by declaring that the URLs aren't recorded. Google's DNS and Omnibox already have similar declarations, so it wouldn't be unprecedented.
- azakai 13y ago
  > sadly other browsers such as Firefox have followed their lead and removed RSS notifications by default. ? I am on Firefox, no addons, and I have a menu item Bookmarks->Subscribe to this page which detects RSS/Atom.
  - pseut 13y ago
    There used to be an icon in the address bar letting you know the website has an RSS feed and that's been removed from Firefox.
  - deleted 13y ago
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  - deleted 13y ago
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  - jmillikin 13y ago
    Firefox used to have an RSS icon in the address bar when a page referenced an RSS feed. This was an easy way to notify the user that a particular page supported RSS. The icon was removed in Firefox 4, causing much annoyance among people who use RSS (c.f. http://www.webmonkey.com/2011/01/firefox-4-ditches-the-rss-button-heres-how-to-get-it-back/ http://www.webmonkey.com/2011/01/firefox-4-ditches-the-rss-b... )
    - azakai 13y ago
      Oh ok, that is definitely a change then, but it's a minor UI change of moving a button into a menu.
  - a_p 13y ago
    THe RSS button is still available. Just click Nightly -> Options -> Toolbar Layout and drag the RSS button onto the toolbar.
    - solarflair 13y ago
Poyeyo 13y ago
Opera still has the icon.
farinasa 13y ago
>Everyone else has a "walled garden" why must Google be different? The FSF would beg to differ. Google does contribute to open source, claimed android to be open source, prescribed to the notion of "don't be evil", and seems to be enthusiastic about computer science in general. Suddenly having a walled garden makes their image not only the exact opposite of what their users thought they were, but now we can add deceitful.
workbench 13y ago
> Everyone else has a "walled garden" why must Google be different? Because they spout "Don't be evil" and "open" when they're backed into a corner.

by yanw 13y ago

ianstormtaylor 13y ago

It's not different, but what the article should have made you realize is how broken (or, if not broken, just fucked up) the system is if the average user (and even higher-than-average users) don't realize how all of these little pieces of the web are eroding their privacy.

jmillikin 13y ago

> Chrome never implemented RSS auto discovery. Chrome has an official extension for RSS auto-discovery: https://chrome.google.com/webstore/detail/rss-subscription-extensio/nlbjncdgjeocebhnmkbbbdekmmmcbfjd?hl=en https://chrome.google.com/webstore/detail/rss-subscription-e... The Chrome team argues that not enough people use RSS to justify having an icon in the URL bar by default. I personally think this is somewhat circular reasoning ("People don't use RSS, so we won't show an icon letting them know about RSS"), but sadly other browsers such as Firefox have followed their lead and removed RSS notifications by default. Also, whether or not the browser implements native RSS auto-discovery is irrelevant to the point of the article. The Chrome extension in the article could be easily implemented by checking for a special <link> element, so that no URLs need to be sent back to Google just to know that the page is Plus-enabled. However, off the top of my head, there's a good reason why this wouldn't do much good. The advertised functionality of the Google+ extension requires details about the Google+ stream that the page links to. If the extension checked for a <link>, it would still need to send the URL in that link to Google to get those stream details. The privacy improvement seems marginal. In the end, I think this complaint is better served by declaring that the URLs aren't recorded. Google's DNS and Omnibox already have similar declarations, so it wouldn't be unprecedented.

azakai 13y ago
> sadly other browsers such as Firefox have followed their lead and removed RSS notifications by default. ? I am on Firefox, no addons, and I have a menu item Bookmarks->Subscribe to this page which detects RSS/Atom.
- pseut 13y ago
  There used to be an icon in the address bar letting you know the website has an RSS feed and that's been removed from Firefox.
- deleted 13y ago
  [deleted]
- deleted 13y ago
  [deleted]
- jmillikin 13y ago
  Firefox used to have an RSS icon in the address bar when a page referenced an RSS feed. This was an easy way to notify the user that a particular page supported RSS. The icon was removed in Firefox 4, causing much annoyance among people who use RSS (c.f. http://www.webmonkey.com/2011/01/firefox-4-ditches-the-rss-button-heres-how-to-get-it-back/ http://www.webmonkey.com/2011/01/firefox-4-ditches-the-rss-b... )
  - azakai 13y ago
    Oh ok, that is definitely a change then, but it's a minor UI change of moving a button into a menu.
- a_p 13y ago
  THe RSS button is still available. Just click Nightly -> Options -> Toolbar Layout and drag the RSS button onto the toolbar.
  - solarflair 13y ago

Poyeyo 13y ago

Opera still has the icon.

farinasa 13y ago

>Everyone else has a "walled garden" why must Google be different? The FSF would beg to differ. Google does contribute to open source, claimed android to be open source, prescribed to the notion of "don't be evil", and seems to be enthusiastic about computer science in general. Suddenly having a walled garden makes their image not only the exact opposite of what their users thought they were, but now we can add deceitful.

workbench 13y ago

> Everyone else has a "walled garden" why must Google be different? Because they spout "Don't be evil" and "open" when they're backed into a corner.