It seems to me there are two basic scenarios for why in the world Google is not providing Google News RSS. 1) They are dragging their heels/it will never happen and it's basically all about money. 2) They are getting ready to do something really cool with News/RSS that brings together Atom, their blogging property, their new personalization, etc. This thread has spent enough time on discouraging scenario 1), anybody want to paint a pretty picture of scenario 2)? ;-)
I think there's a third possibility. They have finite development resource. And putting RSS/Atom into News Search hasn't risen up through the consciousness of the developers who might have done it in their 20% private project time. I still figure if I keep hammering away at them, something will happen. I thought 12 months ago that a proof of concept would do it. Instead I get my bandwidth leached and a rap on the knuckles. ;-)
It's always frustrating when people who are still in JFDI, amateur, free mode, coding at 01:00am have to wait for corporate, 9-5, spec, test, "let's have a meeting", slow motion. I think Google probably moved from one to the other some time ago but then I'm a long way from the bunker so maybe I'm wrong.
BTW. What is it about "Beta" these days? Google News, Friendster, Orkut, Tribe, Firefox. Did they ship? Then call it V1. Whatever happened to release early, release often, get V1.0 out the door and start work on V2.0 ;-)
Back to your question.2) Somewhere between Search, categorization, RSS, Atom, SOAP/XMLRPC APIs, FOAF, Technorati, Blogdex, Blogger, weblogs.com, Typepad/key (and quite a few others) there are indeed some interesting possibilities. I think FOAF in particular just became a Google sized problem looking for a solution. Maybe we'll turn round one day and realize that Microsoft just did it. Stranger things have happened.
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