For the time being, purely experimentally, Google is bringing the RSS protocol back into the browser . This could be a signal to move away from the information monolith Facebook and Twitter towards a decentralized information landscape.

Older users of the network will only feel moderately new about Google’s latest experiment – this “experiment, for users and To help web publishers create deeper connections on Chrome, “as Google’s Janice Wong puts it.

All of a sudden a couple of Chrome developers have obviously rediscovered the previously popular syndication standard RSS (Real Simple Syndication). Now the team wants to “research” how to simplify the retrieval of the latest information from your favorite pages directly in Chrome.

In addition, some Android users in the USA will see an experimental follow function on Chrome Canary in the coming weeks. It sounds a lot like social media and could therefore work. In fact, the well-known RSS protocol will be behind it. For the content of the pages that Canary users then “follow”, the team wants to set up a page section of the same name on the “New Tab” page.

First preview of RSS in Chrome. (Screenshots: Google)

Not only for fans of Google Reader, who mastered this very form of content distribution but was removed from Google in 2013, Google’s return to RSS is good news. Site operators should also use the old, but tried and tested protocol. Because it allows them to deliver their content past all walled gardens, above all Facebook and Twitter, directly to the consumers.

In the future, Google wants to provide site operators with instructions that should help with the solid implementation of RSS in their own variety of channels. With appropriate demand and the resulting success, Google could bring the following back to Chrome via RSS.

That is why Janice Wong calls on publishers, bloggers, authors and advocates of the open web to participate in her blog post. The chances of the project’s success are not bad. After all, the Google Reader, a web-based RSS feed reader, had become the standard between 2005 and 2013.

Its decline and ultimate attitude had to do with the rapidly increasing importance of social networks, which Google had promoted at the time. In the meantime, there is growing skepticism among network users as to whether centralized information pools such as Facebook should actually be the future. RSS is radically decentralized and cannot be controlled by individual services. So it fits perfectly into Web 3.0.

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