I am still intensely salty about the death of Google Reader. It was a fine product; one that plenty of people — including me — used on a daily basis. Now there’s word (via Engadget) that Google wants to play in the RSS space again, this time letting users follow RSS feeds in Chrome in order to keep up with their favorite sites. One look at how this works, however, will leave you wanting.
According to a tweet from Googler Adrienne Porter Felt, the new Chrome feature will present you with a follow button on websites with RSS feeds. When you choose that option, “content shows up on the new tab page as it’s published.”
The implementation leaves quite a bit to be desired, however. As you can see from the above photos, it looks a lot like how Google currently shows news stories on the “New Tab” page. That may be okay if you’re someone who isn’t actually serious about staying up to date, and will just click one of these stories every once in a while. If you plan to follow updates with any sort of seriousness, though, you’ll likely want to use a feed reader instead.
You know — like the one Google used to make.
As of now, this feature is currently in testing. There’s no word on when it might make its way to Chrome browsers everywhere.
