ϟ Google Amp
Out of context: Reply #8
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- rafalski2
AMP seems to be the new RSS, after Google meticulously removed RSS from the web in what is one of the most interesting stories of the web never told.
RSS was a free-for-all XML data format allowing people to read news and articles. Brilliant idea, quickly gaining popularity.
It was, however, a grave danger to Google's core business — advertising. RSS served content stripped off ads. Horrible.
It had to be dealt with and Google did a brilliant job with it. They literally killed off RSS without anyone noticing and attributing it to them. After all these years, I'm still impressed.
They first contained the spreading RSS disease by offering a free RSS reader, effectively killing off all alternative paid RSS readers. It's hard to compete with free and ubiquitous.
Soon enough, most RSS users used Google Reader to aggregate their news feeds. For a couple of years, RSS became nearly synonymous with Google Reader.
In the next, long phase, through slow neglect, lack of feature and UX updates the Reader became more and more dated and useless. Alongside with it, so did RSS. Google got the users disinterested in that way of receiving news. People were tired of waiting for a big update to happen. Or any update for that matter.
At one point Google announced they weren't continuing on with the development of Google Reader and were shutting it down.
For most people this was just another app on Google graveyard.
Hardly anyone noticed, it was RSS that was actually being pronounced dead.The horrific disease, easily accessible, advertising-free news was now completely eradicated.
Hardly anyone wrote about it from this angle. Or at least nothing I could google.