Google Is Apparently Working On A New RSS Feed Reader For Desktops, Effectively Bringing Back Google Reader

After the discontinuation of Google Reader, and bringing in a new RSS feed reader for iOS and Android, Google’s planning on developing one for desktops as well.

The Google Graveyard’s chock-full of actually useful features, but were consigned to oblivion for either not garnering a strong enough audience, or the tech giant allocating resources elsewhere. The reader was an RSS reader which could curate articles for users with exceeding efficiency. For those individuals unaware, an RSS reader is essentially just suggestions feed for online articles and the like. With Google Reader, for example, users could enter specific keywords that related to their topics of interest, and would in return be provided with relevant and recent content on the subject matter. The reader was also very accommodating of other RSS feeds; pasting any online website’s RSS feed link into the Reader would then lead to those articles being recommended in the future. Or, should I perhaps consider typing “did lead to”, as Google pulled the plug on Reader almost a decade past? However, people continue to consume online media at accelerating rates, and therefore the companies decided to give this entire RSS feed gimmick a second chance.

Honestly, all of this might just be conjecture; Google has made no statements of the sort, and we’re making this assumption of RSS feeds returning to desktops based on other evidence. For starters, there’s the fact that Google’s added RSS feeds to Android and iOS, thus clearly affirming its inclination towards taking them more seriously. Furthermore, we have AboutChromebooks helping us out, as the online Chromebook-oriented journal uncovered a bit of code. The early-stage data strings reveal a work-in-progress UI that’s supposedly related to feeding readers for desktop clients. The code even comes with a UI, but it’s unfinished and allows for no interaction.

Adrienne Porter Felt, a Chrome engineer, was reached out to for comment with this evidence. While she revealed no such plans in progress, Ms. Felt did reveal that further progress would be made on the smartphone OS RSS feed readers before we’d see or hear of the development of a desktop version.

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by Arooj Ahmed via Digital Information World