Google to adopt Atom, ignoring old-style RSS

on their new groups-site

[RonPK]

If I understand things correctly, Atom is a relatively new format that is meant to overcome the limitations of the current RSS-formats.

Now Google seems to have adopted it in the beta of their new groups-site. One can get newsfeeds for any usenet group, for example on [groups-beta.google.com...]

I wonder whether it's a smart move not to offer the traditional RSS format?

[eWhisper]

They started using atom feeds on blogger.com a while ago. So they've probably had ample time to see how it works with all the blogger experimentation that goes on.

[Nick_W]

Atoms a great format, but so is RSS. It's all politics as menttioned above....

Personally, I like atom better, has more to offer and I understand it better ;)

Nick

[dillonstars]

On the Blogger site they recommend trying FeedBurner [feedburner.com] to convert Atom into RSS... at least I think that is what it does.

[bcolflesh]

It's all politics as mentioned above...

I guess it's more politically sensitive then I thought.

[ronin]

Here we go again... except this is worse than browser wars...

I want to have newsfeeds flowing from my site, but I don't want to have to format the newsfeeds three times (RSS 2.0, RSS 1.0 and Atom) and neither do I want to only provide one type of feed at the expense of the others.

I could do without a great politically driven newsfeed war on the horizon.

Possible solution? Someone comes up with a meta-technology which converts each of the three into a format with the capabilities of the most powerful of the three.

Kind of like what Trillian does with Y! Messenger, MSN Messenger and AIM... (or something... hey, I'm clutching at straws here...)

[Longhaired Genius]

All the good aggregators read all the popular feeds so there isn't really a problem for publishere or users. Use the format you like or which suits your content.

[currybet]

and I'm still supporting RSS 0.91 - I didn't get to 2.0 yet. *sigh*

[bill]

What happened to the truce that Dave Winer proposed? They were talking about combining the Atom and RSS formats.

[sidyadav]

> They were talking about combining the Atom and RSS formats.

That'd be great - I think there should only be one way of syndication - and RSS has it because its been on the net since ages.

But if they add some more features in RSS 3.0 and decide to integrate ATOM with it as well; We'll have Really Simple ATOM! (RSA)

Sid

[bill]

There was another rumor floating around that the W3C was considering standardizing the ATOM format.

[bill]

After steering this thread off-course...sorry 'bout that...I just wanted to write that I really am having a lot of fun with these Google Groups Atom feeds. I can use my aggregator to run through a bunch of groups and then highlight topics of interest. This is really powerful.

Since the aggregator I'm using supports both Atom and RSS the format isn't really an issue. As long as the feed validates...you'd never notice it.

[RonPK]

Google may have second thoughts.

[webmasterworld.com...]

[bill]

Fortunately I've been using an aggregator that supports Atom and RSS, so I haven't experienced the troubles mentioned in that article. If you've ever used a blog software like MovableType it's really trivial to offer multiple feeds. A lot of my sites using that software automatically generate three RSS feeds: RSS 0.92, 2.0 & Atom. I thought it was a bit odd that Google went exclusively Atom considering the schism it would cause in the market.