If you were burned by Google with RSS, get ready to be burned by Google with LLMs.
Google (correctly) saw RSS as a challenge to the position it wants to be in, which is a replacement for URLs. It wants its search to intermediate all user interaction with the web, and RSS violates that in the steady-state. Google did the smart thing, which is to use it's vast capital to embrace, extend, extinguish viable RSS tech first with Reader and then with Feedburner.
The interesting thing is that LLMs are another contender to intermediate users' relationships with URLs. An LLM that gives references-as-links within an answer is a much better usability story and I predict this usage alone will displace traditional search in the next couple of years. If past is prologue, I think we can expect Google to spend a great deal on LLMs, make internal projects, buy companies, and then shut them down. (Of course it may be that the Search team will pivot to an LLM UX, which would be remarkable but not entirely out-of-the-question since it's compatible with Google's bread-and-butter, search ads.)
Google (correctly) saw RSS as a challenge to the position it wants to be in, which is a replacement for URLs. It wants its search to intermediate all user interaction with the web, and RSS violates that in the steady-state. Google did the smart thing, which is to use it's vast capital to embrace, extend, extinguish viable RSS tech first with Reader and then with Feedburner.
The interesting thing is that LLMs are another contender to intermediate users' relationships with URLs. An LLM that gives references-as-links within an answer is a much better usability story and I predict this usage alone will displace traditional search in the next couple of years. If past is prologue, I think we can expect Google to spend a great deal on LLMs, make internal projects, buy companies, and then shut them down. (Of course it may be that the Search team will pivot to an LLM UX, which would be remarkable but not entirely out-of-the-question since it's compatible with Google's bread-and-butter, search ads.)