Chrome is bringing RSS back to the browser and that’s a good thing
For the time being, Google is bringing the RSS protocol back into the browser on a purely experimental basis. This could be a signal to move away from the information monolith Facebook and Twitter towards a decentralized information landscape.
Older Internet users will find Google’s latest experiment only moderately new – this “experiment to help users and web publishers create deeper connections on Chrome,” according to Google’s Janice Wong put it yourself.
All of a sudden, a couple of Chrome developers have apparently rediscovered the previously popular syndication standard RSS (Real Simple Syndication). Now the team wants to “research” how one can simplify the retrieval of the latest information from one’s favorite pages directly in Chrome.
For this purpose, some Android users in the USA are expected to be able to do this in the coming weeks Chrome Canary see an experimental follow function. It sounds a lot like social media and could therefore work. In fact, the well-known RSS protocol will be behind it. For the content of the pages that Canary users then “follow”, the team wants to set up a section of the same name on the “New Tab” page.
First preview of RSS in Chrome. (Screenshots: Google)
Google’s return to RSS is good news not only for fans of Google Reader, which had brought this form of content distribution to the championship but was canceled by Google in 2013. Site operators should also use the old, but tried and tested protocol. Because it allows them to deliver their content directly to consumers past all walled gardens, above all Facebook and Twitter.
In the future, Google wants to provide website operators with instructions that will help with the solid implementation of RSS in their own variety of channels. If there is enough demand and the resulting success, Google could bring the following back to Chrome via RSS.
That is why Janice Wong calls on publishers, bloggers, authors and advocates of the open web to participate in her blog post. The chances of the project’s success are not bad. After all, the Google Reader, a web-based RSS feed reader, had become the standard between 2005 and 2013.
Its decline and ultimate attitude had to do with the rapidly increasing importance of social networks, which Google had promoted at the time. In the meantime, there is growing skepticism among network users as to whether centralized information pools such as Facebook should actually be the future. RSS is radically decentralized and cannot be controlled by individual services. So it fits perfectly into Web 3.0.
