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Does Google enjoy teasing and sometimes outright torturing the most loyal fans of some of its products? It may seem so.
Hidden inside the latest Chrome build is the “Watched feed” that some bloggers dream of seeing Google Reader return. It’s impossible, but never say never when it comes to Google product decisions.
Chrome added to the sidebar To view bookmarks and Reading List articles in March. Weekend Chrome Story blog saw a new flag in Gerrit, an unstable test build of Chrome’s open source Chromium. To enable this #following-feed-sidepanel flag (now also available in the test build of Chrome, the canary) adds another option to the sidebar: Ribbon.
is it fed? Like RSS feeds, the kind we covered earlier Dear Google Reader is gone, killed for The sins of Google+?
Kevin Tofel That’s what he thinks about Chromebooks. Tofel writes that main code This feature “offers” an RSS-based feed reader based on the special language of “web feeds”. Again, the same section of code that powers the interaction between the browser and the sidebar notes that this will be “the interface that Discover Feed content will use to communicate with the browser”.
There is some uncertainty there, but also evidence that Google is committed to its long-standing efforts to use an open RSS standard in the Follow ecosystem.
“Follow” button was introduced in a Chrome experience for Android In May 2021. After the site, similar to the “Explore” home page feature on many Android phones, Chrome “new tab” lets you see its latest updates in a tab on your page. This feature was included in the Chromium Gerrit desktop builds earlier this yearand the “Watch” button is now available in Chrome Canary.
Chrome last week updated the manual for site owners who want to have their readers “follow” their sites, asking them to create descriptive feed titles and select a single feed for readers instead of offering multiple sections.
Chrome-watching blogs like to raise the specter of Google Reader in their headlines when discussing Google’s efforts to turn apps and devices into content hubs. But it’s unlikely that Google has simply given up on putting Discover-like feeds on its phones, web-based laptops, browsers, search engine, Nest hubs, and more: “In fact, we’re going to show it,” your headlines again.” Discover feeds is also Google-controlled space, so it can bombard them with ads that it can’t with RSS.
Fortunately, there is a definite market for old-school and repurposed RSS readers, and then some very good options. Speaking of which, Ars Technica suggests multi-segment RSS feeds for readers. You can also add /feed/ to the bottom of any author page for author-owned feeds such as only.
