Comments on: Feedsqueezer: Another Competitor for Google

By: stevenmartinez

stevenmartinez — Mon, 26 Jan 2009 03:48:31 +0000

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By: stevenmartinez

stevenmartinez — Sun, 25 Jan 2009 23:48:31 +0000

This is one of very few blogs that was worth the read, thank you for sharing such informative posts, Cheers.
Thanks

By: stevenmartinez

stevenmartinez — Sun, 25 Jan 2009 22:48:31 +0000

This is one of very few blogs that was worth the read, thank you for sharing such informative posts, Cheers.
Thanks

By: Luis

Luis — Sun, 25 Jan 2009 07:09:59 +0000

Unfortunately, Feedburner provides a lot of functionality that I've found shockingly difficult to find elsewhere- good statistics on the number of readers, for example, or very easy email subscriptions. You'd think things that important and relatively easy to do would be built into virtually every piece of blogging software. Instead they virtually all just rely on Feedburner instead.

In principle, I do basically agree with Berin that the concern here is a little overblown, but of all things Feedburner may be closer to a 'sole provider' of some functionality than virtually any other Google service that I'm aware of, and because readers tend to subscribe directly to it it is also harder to move away from than most Google services- it isn't quite rip and replace without risking potentially losing many of your subscribers.

By: Luis

Luis — Sun, 25 Jan 2009 07:03:05 +0000

If you want to start a blog about all the words now used inconsistently with their original Greek and Latin roots, feel free. Once you finish the entry on 'monopoly', you can move on to the tons of other words no longer used consistently with their roots- philosophy, democracy, republic all come to mind. I'm sure Latin teachers the country over will be thrilled by it. The rest of us will mostly be bored to tears

(Yes, I took two years of Latin, two semesters of antitrust, and lots in between…)

By: Berin Szoka

Berin Szoka — Sun, 25 Jan 2009 02:41:32 +0000

Touche. But I'd still argue that current use of the word "monopoly" is patently inconsistent with the word's literal meaning: monoplion right of exclusive sale, equiv. to mono- mono- + p?l(eîn) to sell + -ion n. suffix

Historically, a monopoly (or "patent") was a privilege conferred by government to be the sole authorized seller of something. One might accept the argument that market power allows certain companies to drive up prices, and perhaps even agree that the government should sometimes intervene to stop that, and still recognize that "market power" is not the same thing as "monopoly." Call me old fashioned, but I side with Orwell: Unless we defend the precise meanings of words, we cannot be truly intellectually honest.

By: Todd

Todd — Sun, 25 Jan 2009 02:21:48 +0000

I think after people have gotten burned on giving up control of there feeds to a third party they may be a little smarter the second time around. After all why do you really need Feedburner?

By: Luis

Luis — Sat, 24 Jan 2009 23:22:02 +0000

The word “monopoly” is now commonly used to mean ”control that makes possible the manipulation of prices.”

I think where you said 'now commonly used' you meant 'now used by anyone who wants to be taken seriously.' Talking about single providers tips off anyone who is even vaguely serious that you're just fighting a straw man.