Google Causes Blogger Uproar

Brittany · #1 (**permalink**) 02-12-2004, 10:41 AM

Much to the upset of users, Google’s web log service chose to use the new Atom technology instead of the popular Really Simple Syndication, which is favored by many blog services including LiveJournal.

In 2003, Google took control of Blogger.com, an online journal service with over one million members worldwide. Just last month, the search engine began allowing its Blogger users to syndicate their web logs to other web sites using Atom services, causing an uproar in the web log community.

Since Atom’s creation by RSS critics over the summer, a virtual war has broken out, dividing bloggers between RSS and Atom supporters. Critics are now accusing Google of adding fuel to this fire.

“Why would Blogger-Google do this?” Randy Charles Morin, creator of kbcafe.blog, wrote in his Real Geek’s Blog. “Most every XML syndication tool supports RSS and more don’t support Atom than do. Further, Atom isn't even stable and will change considerably before its final release.”

Really Simple Syndication is popular among its users because it allows them to automatically get updates from their favorite websites. RSS, in all its open standard power and simplicity, is the format favored by Microsoft and Yahoo, Google’s leading competitors.

“Google dominates search the way Microsoft dominates operating systems,” Dave Winer wrote in his Scripting.com blog. “In 2004, it's hard to say which dominance has more potential to do damage to competition.”

Winer, who also claims it’s impossible to trust Google, hopes “that the proponents of Atom will see the wisdom of not forking and building compatibly off the RSS base. And there's hope that users will act in their own interest.”

brianzajac · #2 (**permalink**) 02-12-2004, 10:41 PM

I'm sure that I'm seeing this in a very narrow way...so, feel free to mock me:

Isn't one of the major reasons for business blogs are to reach Google? Doesn't Google like to gobble these blogs up? And, when you're with blogger.com, there's a slight advantage to it's users. I know my blogs get picked up pretty quick due to those factors. So, why should I spend time with RSS if my major goal is to get indexed by Google? Or, can I combine Atom's technology with RSS?

awilliams · #3 (**permalink**) 02-12-2004, 11:17 PM

We did a Webcast last month called RSS WinterFest. Our goal is to elevate the discussion about this topic. One of ther sessions centered on Atom. It was lead by Anil Dash, who is vice president of business development at Six Apart, a weblog service. You can see part of the transcripts at our wiki:http://www.socialtext.net/rss-winter...i?d1_session_4.

The Webcast also featured Dave Winer and a host of other speakers. You can get summaries, transcripts and more information at www.rsswinterfest.com.

At the wiki, you can find information about RSS and Atom, including more info about Anil's discussion. Here is the url: http://www.socialtext.net/rss-winter...s_2_0_and_atom

Patrick Goff · #4 (**permalink**) 02-13-2004, 02:52 AM

What is the purpose of RSS? For instance I generate Industy News articles for my website at www.hoteldesigns.net- with some of the information commercially advantageous to people in my field. I look to my readers to go to the site everyday to read the latest news items. Can I use RSS to tell them when there is an item they are particularly interested in, such as a new hotel development they might want to bid to supply?

Sorry to appear ignorant in this area - but I am!

(MOD edit: remarks about English as a second language deleted)

rawdist · #5 (**permalink**) 02-13-2004, 06:20 AM

I don't quite understand what the fuss is about, Google are allowing users to have an Atom feed and it is the default but RSS is still available. I presume the risk is that by leaving Atom as default, sometime in the future they can drop RSS claiming that, for instance, 60% of the users prefer Atom but in fact 50%of users don't care and 80% of those that expressed a preference prefer RSS. However the blogging comunity is informed, pro-active and more than a little snobish so I can not see any chance of RSS being dropped unless the users really want it dropped. Take a look at one of my newest blogs at cooking410 http://www.rawdistribution.co.uk/cooking410/

ldyguique · #6 (**permalink**) 02-13-2004, 06:26 AM

I did some quick research on the differences between Atom and RSS and found that most people who have been in the on-the-bleeding-edge seem to feel RSS to be a broken technology that has outlived its usefulness.

Quote:

What are the advantages of Atom over RSS 2.0? What problems does it solve?

The original motivation is pretty well described on the Wiki :
http://www.intertwingly.net/wiki/pie/Motivation
Essentially various minor technical bits and pieces, but critically moving on past the political obstacles associated with RSS.

What's interesting is that over the 7 weeks or so the project's been running, the emphasis has shifted a fair bit from the basic format (i.e. "RSS Next Generation") to the API. Having a good, standard way of communicating with blog/syndication tools has been a requirement from the start, so you could e.g. use the same tool to post a new blog entry to a Movable Type blog as a Blogger blog.

RSS systems usually use the Blogger API, which was originally just a quick hack, and the MetaWeblog API which isn't much better. Both of these use XML-RPC that goes direct from code to a programmatic kind of XML language, which is converted back into procedure calls at the other end. It's a bit of an outdated approach, web service techniques have moved on.

There is a pretty decent posting on Cover Pages - Technology Reports that is larger than this but this excerpt details some of the underlying issues:

Quote:

The battle between RSS and Atom has divided the blogging world since the summer, when critics of RSS came together to create an alternative format. Since then, a raft of blog sites and individuals have lined up behind Atom, while Yahoo has thrown its considerable weight behind RSS. The Blogger decision to offer only Atom has angered supporters of RSS, who accuse Google of helping to splinter a wide network of RSS-using bloggers... 'They're breaking users, including people who aren't using their software,' wrote Dave Winer, a Harvard fellow who is commonly considered the arbiter of the RSS format, on his long-running Scripting.com blog. 'There is a lot of implicit trust in the RSS network, an assumption that vendors will behave rationally and will care for users. Any participant can break us, as Google is proving... RSS supporters argued that Google could have given members a choice between RSS or Atom, since Blogger already offers the older format. But Atom partisans lauded Google's move, saying it made sense in the context of the company's support for open-source software and open standards. 'RSS has long been controlled by a single vendor or entity,' said Mark Pilgrim, an early contributor to Atom. 'Atom's an open standard, so people can point at the spec and say they're conforming to it, and it's not controlled by one of their competitors. And RSS is.'... Atom backers are proceeding with plans to bring their technology under the auspices of the Internet Engineering Task Force (IETF).

The thing is, if you have the syndication language well defined, then you can used this not only to publish the feeds, but also *create* the blog entries in the first place. Normally you'd use a http GET to retrieve the feed XML from a particular URI. To create a new entry of whatever, all you have to do is pass a chunk of the XML over http using a POST. The beauty of this is that the syndication system gets unified, (hopefully) making life a lot easier for developers.

Apparently, this particular argument of Atom vs RSS has been going on for awhile. Last July, a thread was developing on the Ten Reasons Why site that was beating this issue up -- one notable posting is from Chris Pirillo:

Quote:

I, too, am tired of reading messages that start with: "Hey, I tried this RSS thing, and all I see is a bunch of code in my browser. What am I doing wrong?" Nothing.

Posted by: Chris Pirillo at July 31, 2003 01:51 PM

OneMoreBite · #7 (**permalink**) 02-13-2004, 04:17 PM

I'm starting a blog called The Slimming Pool at http://slimming.onemorebite.com and I happened to be using Blogger.com. I originally started playing with putting together a blog probably a year or more ago, but Blogger.com didn't have an easy way to convert the blog to RSS, and that seemed to defeat the purpose. Recently Blogger.com suddenly announced support for Atom and I was overjoyed, until I started to check and found that Atom was brand new and there was a war brewing over it.

Great, another controversy. Just what we need.

I'm sticking with Blogger.com for now. I looked high and low for a feed reader that could view the Atom feed and found many of the more popular programs intend to integrate support for Atom in the near future. It appears it will be well supported so it's another wait-and-see I've come to know and love since getting involved in running a business online.

I do think with all the mess involved in publishing via e-mail, blogging is the wave of the future and well worth sticking your toe in the water. We may end up changing how it's done quite a few times before the dust settles.

Kathryn

OneMoreBite · #8 (**permalink**) 02-13-2004, 04:56 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by Patrick Goff

What is the purpose of RSS? ...I look to my readers to go to the site everyday to read the latest news items. Can I use RSS to tell them when there is an item they are particularly interested in, such as a new hotel development they might want to bid to supply?

Yes, that's exactly what you can do. For instance, I went to the site mentioned in this thread, http://www.rawdistribution.co.uk/cooking410/ and found it hilarious. I want to add a feed to it to my feed reader, Awasu, so I can keep up on this fellow's nightly dinners, so the next thing I do is look on his web page for the link to do so. Usually they'll be the XML or RSS orange icon (don't know what Atom's is going to look like as I've never found one). I didn't find it (is there one I missed, rawdist?). If there were an RSS version (or Atom) then I could add it to my reader program by a simple click. Without the RSS version (or otherwise) the only way I can keep up with it is to go back once in awhile (less chance of that in a busy person's day), or get on some mailing list. Since I receive over a 1000 messages a day, I am less and less interested in another mailing list.

When I open Awasu (or whatever reader program you use, there are lots), it displays the new headlines from all the sites I've chosen to monitor. I can read the headlines and choose to click through to see the sites - it's a great way to keep track of lots of sites and also to know when they have new content.

>Sorry to appear ignorant in this area - but I am!

The most difficult thing for me to figure out has been the RSS and how to get my content into the proper format. Thankfully Blogger.com has now made that easy, even with the controversy over the Atom format, I'm happy to be a bit further along in the learning curve.

Kathryn

Gary Allman · #9 (**permalink**) 02-16-2004, 01:41 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by brianzajac

Isn't one of the major reasons for business blogs are to reach Google? Doesn't Google like to gobble these blogs up?

Slightly off topic, but wasn't Google planning to remove blogs to a separate area because they are becomming over run with the number of postings?

As to Atom vs RSS. It's hard enough trying to educate people to use RSS, any confusion is going to dilute the uptake, and make more work for developers - so now I'm going to have to add an Atom feed as well as an RSS feed?

RSS might not be perfect, but starting a turf war doesn't seem the best thing for the web industry at a time when e-mail seems to be loosing its traction.

Gary
Portsmouth UK

Antone Roundy · #10 (**permalink**) 02-17-2004, 09:37 PM

so now I'm going to have to add an Atom feed as well as an RSS feed?

I think that shouldn't be necessary because most client-side tools will probably support both formats for a while. If you're already publishing in RSS, you're supporting all (I would imagine) existing users, so you should be fine. If you only publish an Atom feed, you're leaving a lot of people out for now.

RSS might not be perfect, but starting a turf war doesn't seem the best thing for the web industry at a time when e-mail seems to be loosing its traction.

I realize that the reality of the situation is that the issue is contentious, but I don't think it needs to be. The people who are breaking from the established format by using Atom are the only one's who are going to suffer until Atom support is more widespread. I guess you could say that others suffer too if they can't interoperate with sites that only use Atom, but that's a question of the site not giving, rather than the site taking away.

An analogy to elucidate my point of view on the subject is this: In the beginning was the web (HTML). Somebody decided that the established format wasn't sufficient to do some things they wanted to do, so they invented XML, which was similar in a lot of ways, but also very different. Out of that came RSS. All of us who have discovered how useful RSS is would probably agree that that was a good development.

Now, some people who'd been using RSS have decided that the established format isn't sufficient to do some things they want to do, so they invented Atom, which is similar in a lot of ways, but also very different. I don't think there's necessarily any reason to think that's going to be a bad thing.

That said, we'd benefit from hiding the differences between the two from the end user. If the tools support both formats transparently, the end user doesn't need to know which they're using. The challenge is to find a way to talk to end users about both formats at the same time in a way that helps them accept that as far as they are concerned, there is no difference. Once that's achieved, the people working behind the scenes can decide which works better for them.

rawdist · #11 (**permalink**) 03-10-2004, 05:44 AM

I posted earlier to this thread that I didn't see what all the fuss was about, as Blogger was allowing users to choose RSS or ATOM, well of course I was wrong. I went into one of my more recent blogs http://www.ochranmill.org.uk and lo and behold - no choice anymore. I am still outputting RSS from my older blogs but don't know how much longer I will be able to do this. The reason I am concerned is not the prospect of others not picking up my feeds (though this would be nice, but I am not quite vain enough to think it will happen anytime soon) but because I use feeds to my own blogs to create sticky patches on my own pages. For instance my book review blog fivesandwiches has a section with free comics, http://www.fivesandwiches.com/comics/tween.php I know this brings in a lot of visitors so I use feedroll to display one post each from several of my blogs to get people to travel further into my site(s). It took me quite a time to find a rss feed service that I liked and I have changed which one I use several times as some of them can get quite slow. Now I have to do the whole thing over again with Atom - not happy!!

rawdist · #12 (**permalink**) 03-11-2004, 10:50 AM

Well I decided to find out how to do the job myself, which I should have done in the first place. I found an excellent rss parser written in php at http://magpierss.sourceforge.net/ and I am going to use it to write my own tool for displaying rss feeds to include with the existing tools at my blogfuel site http://www.blogfuel.com. The magpie parser also deals with Atom feeds so should be the answer to all my problems.