RSS feeds from Google News may have little value

In a follow up to my last post on Google News RSS feeds, guess I should have tested using the feeds before blogging about it.

Dave Winer, on a cross country trip and presently in and round Bozeman, Montana explains why Google RSS news feeds may not be up to snuff.

There’s more to say about Google News and feeds.

I’m not sure it’s very useful. Why? Well, try subscribing to one of their feeds in an aggregator for a clue. Each item doesn’t map onto one story, it maps on to hundreds or thousands. Yet, in their feed they pick one that most exemplifies the class of story.

I immediately unsubbed, realizing ‘That’s just Google News,’ a service that I don’t use much because I had an aggregator before it existed and never saw a need to subscribe to their way of doing things.

So perhaps a different kind of client is called for, and maybe a new format, or maybe there’s not really that much value in syndicating something that already is a digested form of syndication? I don’t know, I’ll leave that to others, because their support of RSS didn’t make me into a user of their service.

Dave, when you take LexBlog up on our offer of giving you office space and any support you need with your part of the year office in the Rockies? You said it was New York City or the Rockies in a recent post. We’re talking Bozeman, where LexBlog is going to start up an office.