How Google Undermined RSS Feed Adoption Over the Years
Original: How Google helped destroy adoption of RSS feeds (2023)
Why This Matters
Google's repeated withdrawal from RSS infrastructure has accelerated centralization of web content distribution, weakening open standards.
Open RSS published a 2023 analysis detailing how Google systematically reduced RSS support across multiple products — including Chrome, FeedBurner, Google Reader, and Google Alerts — effectively discouraging widespread RSS adoption among everyday users.
Open RSS documented a pattern they describe as 'Embrace, Extend, and Extinguish' in Google's treatment of the RSS protocol. Early versions of Chromium included a built-in RSS button in the browser toolbar that was removed without explanation. In 2007, Google acquired FeedBurner, an RSS monetization service, then shut down its APIs in October 2012 and drastically reduced its features in July 2022, including email subscriptions — breaking RSS feed URLs for many users. Google Reader, launched in 2005 and widely used as a web-based RSS reader, was shut down in 2013. Google cited 'declining usage,' but a former engineer stated the project faced internal pressure to be killed throughout its existence. The shutdown left users without a comparable alternative and no guidance on continuing RSS usage, leading many to abandon the format entirely. Google also removed RSS output from Google Alerts, its web monitoring service. Open RSS argues that each of these decisions — building products around the open RSS protocol to gain user trust, then removing support — has concentrated internet content distribution away from open standards and toward Google-controlled platforms.