

Google Alerts Drops RSS Delivery Option - duncan_bayne
http://searchengineland.com/google-alerts-drops-rss-delivery-option-165709

======
duncan_bayne
The arrogance is quite astounding. The text of the error message:

"Google Reader is no longer available. To continue receiving Google Alerts,
change to email delivery."

Apparently the only reason for Google to support RSS was that they had their
own RSS aggregator.

Classy move.

~~~
hosay123
If you think that's funny, check out
[http://googledevelopers.blogspot.co.uk/2013/07/pubsubhubbub-...](http://googledevelopers.blogspot.co.uk/2013/07/pubsubhubbub-
feeds-and-feed-api.html) :

    
    
        we encourage providers of feed systems and related tools to connect their
        automated systems for feed acquisition to our PuSH hub (or other hubs in the
        PuSH ecosystem).
    
        Google directly hosts many feed producers (e.g. Blogger is one of the largest
        feed sources on the web) and is a feed consumer too (e.g. many webmasters use
        feeds to tell our Search system about changes on their sites). Our PuSH hub
        offers easy access to hundreds of millions of Google-hosted feeds, as well as
        hundreds of millions of other feeds available via the PuSH ecosystem and
        through active polling.
    
    

You'd think they could have picked a better subject to get people to trust
them over, or a better day to post about it

------
tannerc
I want to believe otherwise, but is this just a case of being one in the
crowd, despite the fact the crowd may be remarkably small?

Google clearly wants to move users to G+, and we've been hearing for years now
how "RSS is dead," but perhaps they're onto something? How could they make
such a glaring move if it was going to cost them so much reputation?

I, for one, can't do the email option for alerts as well. I've basically
stopped using any/all alerts at this point and Google is starting to look like
the enemy.

~~~
duncan_bayne
I'm afraid I have to agree - with their war on RSS and their support for EME
(basically, DRM) in HTML5, Google is now acting against my interests on two
significant issues.

------
Narkov
We switched to Mention.net a few months ago after Alerts stopped sending
alerts. We used to get hundreds of hits per month and now it's about 1 per
month. Mention.net returns everything and more.

~~~
mutagen
I've been getting good results with my light use of mention.net, time to
expand it.

------
aaronpk
It's also funny to see how many websites embedded RSS search feeds and are now
broken:
[https://www.google.com/search?q=%22Google+Alerts+no+longer+s...](https://www.google.com/search?q=%22Google+Alerts+no+longer+supports+RSS+delivery%22)

~~~
duncan_bayne
Yeah, I received zero warning about RSS support being dropped from Alerts ...
I wonder if anyone received notification, or if it was just turned off?

~~~
dangoldin
I asked about this when I heard about the shutdown but no one responded. I
guess now we know the answer.

~~~
eitland
I have contacted them on a number of occasions and while problems often get
fixed, including some particularly annoying ones I never get a reply. Not from
mails, not from forms.

I strongly dislike this silence but I guess it is effective in reducing
feedback.

------
jmharvey
Shutting down a service is understandable. Giving users several months' notice
ahead of shutting down is nice. Telling users, "hey, fyi, this service will
have stopped by the time you read this email" is a lousy way to do things, but
it's the bare minimum.

Shutting down a service without telling anyone that the service is shutting
down (unless someone specifically asks about it) is the kind of thing a fly-
by-night startup does right around the time they let their domain expire.

------
martindale
Wow. I think the amazing thing with this whole Google Reader fiasco is not the
death of a single product, but rather the apparently systematic destruction of
any remaining bastions of trust that the technologically inclined have in
Google as a whole.

------
teeboy
Google, I'll strangle myself to death with titanium barb wires before I use
Google+. Not a single person I know ever updated anything on Google+ and looks
more like a well-designed wasteland right now. With these kind of high-handed
tactics, I'll make sure to badmouth it as much as possible.

Geez!

~~~
embolism
Google+ is Google. You'll use it in the end.

~~~
shmerl
Better to use Diaspora. G+ and centralized social networks in general is a
dead end, and not something "used in the end".

~~~
embolism
Diaspora? Is that still going?

~~~
shmerl
Yes, and actively developed too. It could benefit from more developers of
course.

Latest Big Brother scandal caused a big influx of Diaspora users by the way,
with various refugees from big centralized networks.

------
yanokwa
[http://talkwalker.com](http://talkwalker.com) bills itself as the best free
and easy alternative to Google Alerts. Just started using it a few minutes ago
and so far, so good.

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nswanberg
This service will turn emails into an RSS stream:
[http://www.mmmmail.com/](http://www.mmmmail.com/)

Presumably there are others if this does not meet expectations.

~~~
dustyreagan
I wonder if services like this will become more popular?

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gwern
Interesting coincidence - I was just in the middle of analyzing my Alerts
since January 2007 looking in whether Alerts stopped yielding many hits. (So
far: there is no overall decline _except_ in May/June 2011 when the monthly
average total hits abruptly dropped from 254 to 147 for no apparent reason.)

~~~
gwern
And it's up at
[http://www.gwern.net/Google%20Alerts](http://www.gwern.net/Google%20Alerts)

------
unicornporn
I would love sort of a timeline that documents how Google is slowly abandoning
the once embraced "open standards". Federated XMPP for Google Talk, RSS in
Google Reader for Google+ feeds etc etc.

------
egypturnash
Google Alerts hasn't been sending me email for ages anyway. And yet every so
often I'll go check on my alerts and there are new pages showing up for those
searches.

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jsilva
Just curious how a service like google alerts can be built. Is it all about
crawling ? Any light on this please ?

Thanks

