|
Google, a company which revolutionalised the Internet search has
finally started to use RSS in a big way. It was more than an obvious
move for Google to start looking into this ever-growing market. As the
other web giants Yahoo! and MSN keep on enhancing the different uses of
RSS, in this article we analyze how Google is contributing to
“operation syndication”. Google News Feeds Previously,
the term “feeds” was synonymous to Google News, another big service
provided by Google. Since Google didn’t give any support to RSS or Atom
feeds, programmers started to scrap headlines off Google News. And
these headlines were then displayed on another Web site. However,
now you see Google supports both RSS and Atom feeds. Reportedly Google
News team had been receiving a lot of feature requests for RSS feed
support. And that’s why the company decided to give a dose of news
through both the syndication flavors, Atom and RSS. This shows that
even Google couldn’t ignore the growing popularity of RSS. It
still took Google a long time before they actually started on with the
Google News feeds. But even now Google’s support has only been added to
Google News content and has not been extended to it’s standard web
search. Even though Yahoo! has started to provide News feeds just for
that one specific keyword. For example, if you would like to follow
news that mentions “George Bush”, you can do that perfectly. This
hasn’t been implemented by Google as of yet, but might be soon. Re-use
of Google RSS feed content is officially limited to non-commercial uses
and requires complete credentials of all the individual sources
included, Google itself and the publication of the search terms and
criteria used to create the feed. Will these restrictions really help
Google to harness the true power of RSS? Well, now that’s another
question! Google’s RSS Ad Patent “Google Files for
RSS Ad Patent” – That seems to be the hottest topic been going around
the Internet for some time now. Another classic example of the web
getting “Googlized”, as the world’s biggest search engine revs up to
dominate the RSS ad market. If you still didn’t get what exactly
I’m talking about here, Google has filed for a patent with the US
Patent and Trade Office (USPTO) for embedding advertisements into
syndicated RSS and Atom feeds. According to the abstract, the
patent is all about a method for "incorporating targeted ads into
information in a syndicated presentation format in an automated
manner." This goes beyond RSS or Atom feeds, as it pertains to
syndicated formats on the whole. However, Google wasn’t the first
to jump in the RSS ad bandwagon. Companies like Pheedo and Kanoodle had
already started trying their hand at it long back. If we see the
positive side of this, Google taking it’s own protection measures in
the RSS ad bracket, is itself a big proof about the potential of this
growing technology. The filing is not astonishing though, for a firm of
it’s size can delve much deeper. Quoting from Pheedo’s official
blog “Google is not going to own RSS advertising. At best, Google may
gain some protection for its specific techniques and methods of
inserting and tracking ads in syndicated content.” All I can say is,
Google is surely making huge strides in the RSS sector but everything
does have a limit. Google RSS Reader After heavily
betting upon RSS by filing a patent for the ads, Google wasn’t surely
gonna stay behind when it came to RSS readers. It was very predictable
for the company to launch it’s own aggregator, another step towards
bettering the syndication lifestyle. What’s common between
Google’s reader and its other services is the simplicity of use. The
way Google designs it’s services, (doesn’t matter if it’s Gmail or
Adsense) is what wins over everything else. That’s exactly what one
gets to see in Google’s reader. The ease of use and how simple it is. The
web-based reader, which is in its beta stage, requires a login similar
to Gmail. Once logged in, feeds can be added and organized very
effortlessly. The feeds can be organized by various names or the user
can also import subscriptions from other RSS aggregators or online
services and easily subscribe to feeds just by entering the RSS feed’s
URL. They have also started to distribute the trendy “Add to Google”
button, an addition to a collection of many others provided by
different readers. Google’s entry into the RSS reader market will
definitely shake well-established companies like Newsgator and Pluck.
Since Google has complete power over the sponsor ad listings in the
search results, advertising this new service wouldn’t be a big deal.
Just type in “RSS Reader” in Google and you’ll know for yourself. On
a last note, Google is surely taking in on RSS and is trying to take
the technology to new level. This clearly shows that RSS is here to
stay. Something for all of us to sit up and take notice!
-------------
Mustafa Khundmiri is the co-founder of http://www.rapidfeeds.com
- A Free online service which helps anyone create, edit, publish and
track RSS feeds and podcasts. Sign Up for your FREE account on http://www.rapidfeeds.com and also get a free subscription to "RSS Chronicle" - A Newsletter exclusively based on RSS and syndication. |
