Microsoft really embraces RSS

Lots of buzz in the blogosphere and in mainstream media about the news today that Microsoft will be building support for RSS into Longhorn, the next release of the Windows operating system due in late 2006, and not only in the next version of Internet Explorer.

Business Week Online has a good summary of today’s news which was released at Gnomedex. Some key points:

[…] The fact that Microsoft is putting so much effort behind RSS suggests that the technology’s time has come. Michael Gartenberg, vice-president and research director at Jupiter Research, estimates that about 10% of U.S. Web surfers use RSS readers, software designed to view feeds from Web sites. "This is the type of thing that will bring it into the mainstream," Gartenberg says. "It’s going to change behavior, and it’s going to do it very quickly."

What’s more, Microsoft is going after the RSS market in a very un-Microsoft-like way -– it’s making its RSS technology available for free using the so-called Creative Commons license.

[…] Before Microsoft brings out the new technology with Longhorn, it’ll make RSS feeds readable from inside its widely used Internet Explorer browser. Right now, users typically have to cut-and-paste Web addresses into RSS readers to subscribe to services. RSS subscribers will be able to read those feeds in a test version of the new browser, available later this summer.

But Microsoft plans to dive much deeper when Longhorn ships. Including the RSS technology in the new operating system will allow thousands of software developers to create programs that take advantage of RSS feeds.

Not everyone see Microsoft’s news as good – Nick Fink writing in Digital Web Magazine, thinks Microsoft is taking RSS five steps backwards.

If you want to get opinions directly from members of the RSS Team at Microsoft, stop by Channel 9 and take a look at Robert Scoble’s video interviews. Also see the tech details about RSS in Longhorn in the Longhorn developers blog.

Undoubtedly more information – and more discussion – will emerge in the coming days.