RSS Wins, Signals Atom's Death Toll?

S. Housley writes " RSS appears to have conquered the last hurdle in becoming the industry syndication standard. Microsoft's inclusion of RSS into the newest version of Internet Explorer and reports that RSS will be in Longhorn's coming release appears to be the final nail in the coffin of the Atom specification. Even Atom's steadfast supporter Google, appears to have seen the light. Google had previously acquired Blogger, a popular blogging tool that uses the Atom specification to syndicate the contents of blogs created on the Blogger platform. In the past Google had strategically steered clear of endorsing the RSS specification hoping that Atom, would take hold. Google's recent new service that allows web surfers to monitor Google News using either RSS or Atom feeds, appears to be an acknowledgment that perhaps in purchasing Blogger, they chose the wrong specification. "

Comments

Article from a biased company

[bigwavejas]

RSS may have won the Atom/RSS battle, but for Feedforall.com to make such matter-of-fact statements such as,

"Google's recent new service that allows web surfers to monitor Google News using either RSS or Atom feeds, appears to be an acknowledgment that perhaps in purchasing Blogger, they chose the wrong specification."

...When they're a company that exclusively promotes the use of RSS, it seems a bit self-righteous; moreover, presumptuous that Google is simply writing off Atom.

Crack monkey

[LordMyren]

You crack rock smoking monkey, only like .5% of the web denziens actually use some form of syndication. Most people havent the foggiest idea what RSS even is. So, MS puts RSS into IE: suddenly RSS is going to overrun atom? Somehow I think not.

IMO, atom is a far better protocol. The creators obviously tried to integrate the protocol with existing XML standards, v. RSS which basically gets as far as tag>. Its far more clear about its payload and is way better suited towards XML delivery. But, decide for yourself.

I see no problem with the current duality. I do wish Atom were available more places, but I can still live with RSS where I need to.

Myren

Formats don't die

[mveloso]

Old formats don't die, they just go into maintenance mode.

Saying one format or another has won is always premature. The only time it's safe to say that a format is dead is when they have to build new equipment to read it because the hardware is missing. And even then you never know.

This article is obviously biased. It's like when Netscape said "the desktop is dead" when the Java plugin was first released.

Bias

[slapout]

RSS will be in Longhorn

Yeah, because there's absolutely no possibilty that someone will write a program for Longhorn(Vista) that will support Atom.

Longhorn's coming release appears to be the final nail in the coffin of the Atom specification

I guess because Microsoft declares something, that's it. Everyone else should just pack up and go home. (Someone should be sure to tell those Firefox people that Firefox isn't going to be on the Vista install CD!)

I don't have a dog in this fight, but this story seems to have a bias.

Atom is more than a feed format

[joeykiller]

It's worth noting that Atom is more than RSS is, in that it is also a push/publication format. You can use Atom to post to your blog; you can use it to upload pictures and files, delete postings, etc. It's quite possible that the two formats could continue to co-exists peacefully, merely because they fill different functions.

Re:Atom's Death Toll

[squidfood]

To sum up:

When a bell tolls a death knell
Each knell's for one body
The death toll is the sum of knells
But only one's for thee.