More information on Google’s support for Atom and abandonment of RSS: One post on Blogger Blog, an independent site devoted to the software, indicates that the only syndication format available to “standard Blogger users” is Atom. Everybody else can choose RSS or Atom, but not both.In a subsequent post, a Google employee indicates that “legacy support” will continue to be provided for RSS among Blogger users who have been offering a feed in that format.
If Google had no syndication support in Blogger, I could understand why it might decide to offer only one format and pick Atom over RSS. Atom is an interesting new format, though personally I think it would be misguided for weblog publishing software not to support RSS and thousands of existing users.
However, because the company has functional code in Blogger that supports RSS, the only reason not to offer that feature to customers in addition to Atom is political — yet another volley in a long feud among developers regarding the subject.
Do you really want a company as powerful as Google withholding its support for a popular Internet protocol strictly to promote an alternative format?