Embrace, extend, extinguish: How Google crushed and abandoned the RSS industry | ZDNet: Summary: Most of the commentary I've read so far about the loss of Google Reader has been about its use as an RSS client. But that's a red herring. The real victims were companies that had planned in 2005 and 2006 to build RSS sync engines. Google stomped them out of business like Godzilla sweeping through Tokyo.