Richard MacManus at the Read/Write Web posts some thoughts and observations on the integration of RSS and Search – Among other things, he notices that Bloglines, that now belongs to IAC’s ASK, has had a very Search focused makeover.
RSS And Search Looking For Big Plays
Editor’s Note: As the search engine industry continues its embrace of Really Simple Syndication, questions about Google remain. Many think the boys at “G” have missed the boat completely when it comes to RSS, something rarely said about Google. What are your feelings on the continuing integration of RSS and the search engine industry? Discuss at WebProWorld.
On a lighter note: Apparently Nick doesn’t like being in a suit. Not to worry Nick. At least Raf made you look distinguished, unlike some previous authors that will remain nameless. 😉
RSS & Search, where are we now?
At present, the integration of RSS and top tier Search is minimal at best. We have simple things like my.yahoo and my.msn, which both offer RSS subscription and feed reading as part of an overall package. Then we have Bloglines with the above-mentioned Search makeover. No Google.
Where are we going?
MSN have been testing a dedicated RSS aggregator, which, on the whole, looks more than promising. ASK will clearly want to leverage their new acquisition with Bloglines – so what of Yahoo and Google?
Yahoo have a good rep with RSS, they’ve done wonders on providing feeds for advanced news searches and no doubt we’ll see more from them with the imminent release of recently announced Yahoo! 360, which incidentally, you can see a sneak preview of today courtesy of Charlene Li. At least I hope we’ll see more from them, my.yahoo is a poor RSS offering in general, as is my.msn – what I’d really like to see is something dedicated, and integrated with web search.
So What of Google?
Google are way late to this party, but I’d find it very hard to believe that they’re not working on something furiously behind closed doors. They have to be, right? Again, as with Yahoo, what would really excite me would be to see a dedicated RSS reader/service combined with powerful web search – imagine if, late as they are, GOOG suddenly turned up with a tab on the homepage to a Bloglines-like system that combined the beauty of RSS with the power of Google’s web search? – They could literally blow the others out of the water in fell swoop.
Only time will tell on Google I guess.
So is RSS and Search the next battleground? I think Richard thinks so, and I’m inclined to agree, or at least acknowledge that’s its one area we could see fierce competition in this year – the other will be personalization.
Nick Wilson is the publisher and founder of Threadwatch.org.
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