Hacker News Reader

Comment by linker3000 | Hacker News Reader

The most used app on my Android phone is an RSS reader. It has feeds including: Hacker News, the BBC, Reddit, The Register, Computer Weekly, Wired and a couple of retro computer Google groups. The latter stopped updating on 26th July, but everything else gives me all the news and info I want in a single place without having to install numerous dedicated apps or trawl through multiple Web sites - it's just a great app and service.

According to the Play store, the app I use has "100,000+ downloads" which hardly points to a dead ecosystem.

Stupid Google.

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> According to the Play store, the app I use has "100,000+ downloads" which hardly points to a dead ecosystem.

But that is far away from Google-Scale. Anything under 5-10 million is likely not in googles eye.

But I think the actual problem with google and rss is the isolation of users choice that google seems to dislike. Google is strong on AI-assisting the users. They seem to prefer giving the people tools which guide them and learn the choices of the user, instead of letting the user choose themself. And RSS is a big obstacle for this as it's outside their control.

> Stupid Google.

They’re not stupid, they just know they can kill RSS and steer people toward more monetizeable things without any repercussions. This is not “stupid”.

> This is not “stupid”

It is malevolent.

And "malevolent" becomes "stupid" if the long term consequences are inadequate to compensate (Carlo Cipolla).

Really hope you are right, that more normal non-tech user will start stop using google and all their services. Whenever a company monopolise product and services is not good for end users.

True. "Evil" might be more appropriate here.

Yeah evil. Definitely agree!!

Google owns youtube, which is by far the biggest website that supports RSS.

The YouTube RSS feeds have been down for extended periods a few times in the last few weeks.

Yes but it keeps going down, and having strange 404s randomly. If this keeps happening, they'll probably just give it the shuv one day.

i think we all know the usefulness of rss, however google cant monetize it so it must die.

There's no problem in principle to monetising RSS data by sticking ads into the stream. The real problem for Google is (I suspect) that it is a standard protocol, so enables anybody to play, and that means escape from Google's walled garden. In a fit of Apple-envy, and lacking any imagination, Google (and MS) seem to have opted for trying to enforce a walled-garden panopticon as their means to profit, and in that view of the world, RSS -- and, indeed, any other standard protocol -- must die.

RSS isn't easily surveilled. RSS apps download feeds but that doesn't mean an eyeball could have seen any particular item. You could do custom trackable links and charge for clicks, but charging for impressions would be much harder.

Are there other Google ad properties that work that way? (charge only for clicks, not impressions)

I mean if there is an image inside of an item I would assume the RSS reader would optimize for downloading images as needed.

Podcasts are largely distributed via RSS, and it’s a blossoming advertising market.

Some services offer to splice audio segments with “current” ads, so that even older content can bring in new ad revenue, if I remember correctly.

You can do ads with RSS, it’s just not as lucrative because the market is small and harder to sell than standard web properties.

It's not that it "must die", there's just no incentive for Google to keep it around. It's just a cost tagged on to maintenance of Google Groups which can be cost without any major downsides (from Googles perspective).

It's more surprising that they haven't killed Google Groups completely.

Heya would you mind sharing which app you use?

I'm only starting to get into RSS on my PC now after having recently seen the light.

Would be keen to sync this to my phone as well somehow.

Thanks.

I've been happily using (self hosted) ttrss for years. On PC the web interface works well. On my Android phone, I have the app installed (the paid version).

I second that. Very good solution for self-hosting.

I'm selfhosting miniflux (from a raspberry pi) and am just using the web interface. It has been working great from computer, phone and tablet.

+1 for miniflux. The only place where it doesn't work is on my Kindle, whose browser is pretty terrible.

Hmm, guess you found the one place it doesn't work.

Love the Miniflux!! Although I think I pulled something after this latest release lol.

Flym on Android.

Which app are you using?

I recommend Inoreader.

NetNewsWire is pretty good if you're in the Apple ecosystem and want something fast and simple.

Reeder + Feedly.

Flym on Android

groups.io still supports them. Yes Google is stupid!!!

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