Google syndication
Can someone explain to me what’s going on with Google’s syndication protocol? It enables queries to a data base:
GData provides a general model for feeds, queries, and results. You can use it to send queries and updates to any service that has a GData interface. Syndication is an effective and popular method for providing and aggregating content. GData provides a way to expand the types of content that Google can make available through syndication; in particular, it lets you use the syndication mechanism to send queries and receive query results. GData also lets you send data to Google, and update data that Google already has. Is it going to cause confusion in the marketplace? Does it provide something new that’s useful? What are the uses? How does it compare with Ray Ozzie’s two-way-syndication protocol?
Tags: rss
April 21st, 2006 at 6:21 am
As far as I understand, all the authentication and posting stuff in that document should be ignored. They want to extend syndication mechanism and allow sending search queries to feeds and extract not the whole feed, but only search results in Atom or RSS (i.e. make all this “subscribe to these search results via RSS” stuff standartized).
Same stuff, as with Atom. Atom allows posting and so on, but 99,9% of its use is retrieval of feeds. This won’t confuse anyone - these extra features simply won’t be used…
April 21st, 2006 at 10:35 am
[...] Jeff Jarvis: “Can someone explain to me whatÕs going on with GoogleÕs syndication protocol?” [...]
April 21st, 2006 at 10:58 am
Hey Jeff,
I wrote a quick explaination of GData on my blog.
The source of the confusion is the GData is a protocol, not a standalone service. I think it has enormous potential.
Maurice
April 21st, 2006 at 12:31 pm
“all the authentication and posting stuff in that document should be ignored”
I wouldn’t go that far.
It sounds like they will allow you to develop your own applications against gmail/google user identities. that’s potentially huge. If I recall, Yahoo has a similar spec, could be wrong about that however.
April 21st, 2006 at 2:11 pm
In the past syndication with RSS has been a generally one-way thing: you can read a feed directly over HTTP, but if you want to post to a blog or whatever you had to use completely different formats/protocols (Blogger API, Metaweblog API). The Atom Publishing Protocol (APP) provides a way of sending information that is entirely consistent with the way you receive information, using simple HTTP methods, and following general best practices.
GData is essentially a store which supports APP plus OpenSearch (the fact that they were able to incorporate OpenSearch in a straightforward fashion is a reflection of how APP uses XML to good advantage compared to the inflexible XML-RPC APIs).
See also: Looking forward to an Atom Store and Joe Gregorio’s comments on GData.
April 21st, 2006 at 4:55 pm
[...] Jeff Jarvis picked up on my post the other day about GData, Is GData knocking down Google’s walled gardens, or enabling a new kind of portal? Google’s new syndication protocol which is an extension of both RSS and Atom. Like most people, Jeff isn’t sure what this means - and neither is Dave Winer. I’m in the same boat, but what I do know is that Google has taken a sudden interest in extending RSS and Atom. Check out this Google Base documentation, for RSS 2.0 and for all syndication formats. This is all about enabling bulk upload of items into Google Base, which you’ll recall is Google’s potential giant database of structured data on the Web. Google is obviously eyeing RSS (or syndication in general) as a means of getting people to upload data to Google Base. Here’s how they’ve extended RSS 2.0 for example: "To facilitate the addition of more detailed information we extended RSS 2.0 by creating a module defined in a Google Base namespace. The namespace defines a list of attributes that can be used to increase the amount of information provided for an item in a bulk upload. […] The two major changes in this example are the addition of the namespace declaration (near the top) and the inclusion of five new attributes at item level — image_link, expiration_date, job_function, location, and label. The namespace declaration is required in order to use attributes defined in the Google Base namespace." [...]
April 22nd, 2006 at 6:01 am
[...] Maurice says that Google’s new syndication protocol, which I asked about yesterday, is an indication that Google is putting a gate in the wall around its garden to enable queries into its data. That would be good. But what it really should allow is not just queries into but scraping of its data for that data is our data that we put there in services like Google Base. Now that it is trying to become a repository of our data, that should be open to the world to aggregate and analyze as Google aggregates others’ data. The Golden Rule of the Google Age should be: Scrape unto others as you would have them scrape unto you. I hope that’s what the new syndication protocol does but I’m still not sure. [...]
April 22nd, 2006 at 7:34 am
[...] Dave pointed to Jeff’s asking “what’s up with GData” and a bunch of good responses have flourished including Maurice’s. [...]
April 23rd, 2006 at 6:21 pm
[...] Jeff Jarvis picked up on my post the other day about GData, Is GData knocking down Google’s walled gardens, or enabling a new kind of portal? Google’s new syndication protocol which is an extension of both RSS and Atom. Like most people, Jeff isn’t sure what this means - and neither is Dave Winer. I’m in the same boat, but what I do know is that Google has taken a sudden interest in extending RSS and Atom. Check out this Google Base documentation, for RSS 2.0 and for all syndication formats. This is all about enabling bulk upload of items into Google Base, which you’ll recall is Google’s potential giant database of structured data on the Web. Google is obviously eyeing RSS (or syndication in general) as a means of getting people to upload data to Google Base. Here’s how they’ve extended RSS 2.0 for example: [...]
April 25th, 2006 at 11:51 am
[...] Perhaps that point takes on even more meaning given the recent news from Google. Recently, I noticed from fellow ZDNet blogger Richard McManus that Google now has its own extensions to both RSS and Atom. Through Jeff Jarvis, Dave noticed this announcement as well. But the problem is that silence on the issue beit from Buy.com, Google, or any other third party that decides to extend RSS (and there will be others) is forboding. Google’s Web page on "GData" (as Google wants it known) makes no mention either way (free/open or encumbered) on the legal terms and conditions. Terms and conditions are however listed with one of the services (Google Calendar) that will be accessible through GData. Those terms and conditions very clearly state: …you agree that you will not copy, reproduce, alter, modify, or create derivative works from the Service. You also agree that you will not use any robot, spider, other automated device, or manual process to monitor or copy any content from the Service. The Google Rights include rights to (i) the Service developed and provided by Google; and (ii) all software associated with the Service. [...]
May 12th, 2006 at 10:18 am
Hrmm… Thanks for the brief description on google syndication.
May 21st, 2006 at 1:42 pm
the main matter behind the screen of gdata(google syndication protocol) is that, it has an objective to reach the heights, sorry, i want to become the height itself. clearly to say, it (google) want to become the internet itself and to crush other site down and pay a minor for their RICH RESOURCES. This is the main idea behind them. This is from me(SEO).
October 27th, 2006 at 6:19 pm
I agre it has potential as well but there seems to be a few underlying question as to wether or not it will be efficient with other programs.