dsandler.org/wp

Um, so, in the words of Australia, double you tee eff, mate? According to an RSS advocacy piece, advertised without commentary on that great green geek site, RSS’ Win, Signals Atom’s Death Toll [sic].

The thrust of the article is that, because Atom hasn’t erased RSS from the face of the earth, it is “dead” and RSS has “won”. Evidence? Microsoft’s support of RSS in Windows Vista (despite demonstrable evidence that Longhorn ??? Atom) and Google’s support of RSS as well as Atom in its new Google Desktop 2.0. Consider the statement:

In the past Google had strategically steered clear of endorsing the RSS specification hoping that Atom, would take hold. Google’s recent new service that allows web surfers to monitor Google News using either RSS or Atom feeds, appears to be an acknowledgment that perhaps in purchasing Blogger, they chose the wrong specification.

Let me offer another possible explanation: Maybe RSS has greater mindshare (among the 9% of Internet users who are familiar with news feed technology) and is much more widely deployed in client software. In this case, to restrict Google News to emitting only Atom feeds would unnecessarily limit Google’s audience.

To say that the inclusion of the quite-popular RSS alongside the up-and-comer Atom means that “Atom is dying” is akin to saying that Google’s support of Internet Explorer represents the last nail in the coffin of Firefox, which it has also always supported.

version 2 is out, including a new RSS-reading desktop sidebar. Just in case you’re keeping track, the Google euphemism for RSS feeds is “Web Clips”:

Read RSS and Atom feeds from the web. Click on an item to read the entire clip’s content in the details pane. Feeds are generally updated every 30 minutes. In Options, you can manually add a feed by entering its URL, or select a recent feed to add by clicking the “Add Recent Clips” button. Feeds are automatically added based on the web pages you visit, unless you uncheck the “Automatically add commonly viewed clips” checkbox.