Google recently pulled the trigger on its widely used, but not extremely popular, RSS extension for the Chrome browser, Google Reader. Google Chrome RSS will still be used in other apps, but it appears as if not enough people, aside from serious news scavengers, are using the Reader extension. Google Chrome RSS has been the backbone of many collaborative news apps, which combine multiple current events sources together in one place.
Although Reader has been put to sleep, Google Chrome RSS is not being abandoned entirely. There are still an abundance of plug ins which operate on Google Chrome RSS, such as Google Calendar RSS, Google search RSS and many a Google RSS widget (take the Google RSS feeder for example). So, although Google news RSS may not see the light of day again, RSS as an open format lives on in its many other forms. For now.
Why, then, would Google be interested in beginning to close the door on this once entirely open format? One logical guess would be to say they wish to push Google users toward its closed, moderated, sign up only services such as Google Plus and Gmail and away from an open invitation, anything goes formatting system. This move gives the titan company more control in moderation and market analysis than Google Chrome RSS would ever provide.
The general trend of the internet seems to be epitomized in this action of stripping Google Chrome RSS: close the door and charge admission; perhaps not directly, but through advertisements and the selling of individual personal information to companies (as Facebook made popular).
The days of the web being the last great unmarked territory are long gone and all the major players have already staked their flags in its soil to claim their own colonies; to begin building their empires. Those of us who had been looking to the internet as a utopic beacon of a free flowing force of culture, knowledge and ideas, I am afraid that we have been rather naive. Disappearing with Google Chrome RSS is one of the final forms of openness the internet retained.
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