How Google's embrace-extend-extinguish cycle stalled RSS adoption

The open RSS protocol remains widely used, but its mainstream momentum stalled largely because Google repeatedly built products around RSS, drew in users, then stripped out support once those users were locked in. The pattern spans more than a decade of Google properties. Chromium quietly dropped its built-in feed-detection button; Google News added RSS-based feeds in 2002 and killed support entirely by December 2017; and Google Alerts lost its RSS delivery option in 2013 before backlash forced a partial reversal. A Chrome RSS extension was pulled and then reinstated within a week, blamed on a mistake — which, if true, only underscores how low a priority feeds had become.

Two moves did the most damage. The 2013 shutdown of Google Reader removed the dominant feed-reading app with no comparable replacement and no migration guidance, and Google’s stated rationale of declining usage was disputed by a former engineer who said people had been trying to kill the project the whole time he worked on it. Separately, Google’s 2007 FeedBurner acquisition routed publishers’ feeds through Google-controlled versions carrying ads and tracking; Google then shut the FeedBurner APIs in 2012 and gutted core services, including email subscriptions, in 2022, leaving many feed URLs broken.

The throughline is a company that leaned on the open web to build trust and reach, then walked back that support without explanation each time, eroding user confidence in RSS as a reliable technology. A 2021 promise to restore RSS features in Chrome has gone largely unfulfilled, and the author argues Google’s history gives little reason to trust that any revived support would be maintained. The broader stakes: as one of the web’s most influential players, Google’s on-again, off-again treatment of a foundational open protocol shapes whether the open web stays viable.