From [1]:<p><i>> What is the Google Feed API?</i><p><i>> With the Feed API, you can download any public Atom, RSS, or Media RSS feed using only JavaScript, so you can mash up feeds with your content and other APIs with just a few lines of JavaScript. This makes it easy to quickly integrate feeds on your website. </i><p>"To quickly integrate feeds on your website".<p>The latest API deprecations and product removals (everywhere, not just at google) are part of what I believe to be a growing trend to take away the ability for the end users to be publishers and to bring them back to be passive consumers (like in the old radio / TV days).<p>[1] <a href="https://developers.google.com/feed/" rel="nofollow">https://developers.google.com/feed/</a>
I would only use a Google, Microsoft, _whoever_ API if I was paid for integrating and maintaining it. I would never rely on such a thing in a personal project/venture. Time and again paid and free web services are getting shut down without a replacement. The reputation is already such that nobody can trust a service to be there in 2 years. Another reason to build more decentralized solutions while we can. I was delighted to read that Berners-Lee and Cerf advocated just that recently.
Google need to learn that providing a free service and then retracting it is quite damaging to their reputation. I know <i>many</i> developers who are incredibly reluctant to build on Google APIs because the danger of them being shut down feels high.<p><i>However, interest and use of the API has waned over time, and it is running on API infrastructure that is now two generations old at Google.</i><p>I wonder if there's a correlation between the downturn in interest in RSS and Google Reader being closed.
As I pointed out last time, RSS for real news is doing fine. RSS for social crap is dead.<p>Space News has an RSS feed.[2] The Senate Democrats have an RSS feed covering what's happening on the Senate floor.[3] (The GOP discontinued their feed.[4]) The House Energy and Commerce Committee has a feed with markup in embedded JSON.[5] Not sure what's going on there. Even The Hollywood Reporter has an RSS feed.[6]<p>So for real news, RSS is in good shape. RSS seems to be doing fine for sources that have something important to say.<p>[1] <a href="http://feeds.reuters.com/reuters/topNews" rel="nofollow">http://feeds.reuters.com/reuters/topNews</a> [2] <a href="http://spacenews.com/feed/" rel="nofollow">http://spacenews.com/feed/</a> [3] <a href="https://democrats.senate.gov/feed/" rel="nofollow">https://democrats.senate.gov/feed/</a> [4] <a href="http://www.gop.gov/static/index.php" rel="nofollow">http://www.gop.gov/static/index.php</a> [5] <a href="https://energycommerce.house.gov/rss.xml?GroupTypeID=1" rel="nofollow">https://energycommerce.house.gov/rss.xml?GroupTypeID=1</a> [6] <a href="http://feeds.feedburner.com/thr/news" rel="nofollow">http://feeds.feedburner.com/thr/news</a>
Does anyone have a good replacement for this? I somehow missed the original announcement and am now realizing that I'm one of those (apparently few) people who actually does use the API.
Google is throwing new API's without commitment and trying to find if one of them becomes popular. This is good way to limit the risk.<p>Developers wait to see if Google commits to API before fully adopting it. This is good way to limit the risk.
I'm confused about the use case of the Google Feed API.<p>It let's you download a feed by Javascript. But why is this a web service?<p>Is there no Javascript framework that does the same without having to roundtrip to an external service?
Not too late to consider a switch to Superfeedr <a href="https://blog.superfeedr.com/google-feeds-api-welcome/" rel="nofollow">https://blog.superfeedr.com/google-feeds-api-welcome/</a>
Google, making the web less transparent one day at a time. And meanwhile they complain Facebook is eating the open web, while they're dismantling it themselves