Feed me! Google Alerts not just for email anymore
This week, our Trondheim-based Google Alerts team launched support for feeds, a highly requested feature you can use to receive alerts via the feed reader of your choice. (Of course, we think the best places to view your updates are iGoogle and Google Reader.)
Context & Ripple Effects
Google had already built a feed-consumption stack around its Google Reader launch and Reader access within Gmail. Feed delivery gives Google Alerts a place in that existing subscription workflow rather than treating the inbox as its only endpoint.
The move also follows coverage of Google's planned feed API offering, reinforcing feeds as a distribution layer across Google services. It matters because monitored search results can be collected alongside other subscriptions in Google Reader, iGoogle, or another reader.
First-order effects
- Google Alerts users can receive monitored updates in a chosen feed reader, reducing reliance on email delivery.
- Google Reader and iGoogle gain another source of continuously updated content for their existing feed interfaces.
Second-order effects
- Google Alerts becomes more useful to people who already organize information through subscriptions, placing alert results beside news and blog feeds rather than in a separate inbox workflow.
- Third-party feed readers can carry Google Alerts without Google having to build a dedicated alert interface for each reader.
Third-order effects
- The launch strengthens a service-design model in which Google publishes updates as feeds and lets aggregation clients determine where users consume them.
- If Google extends the same pattern across more services, the value of its Reader, iGoogle, and feed-distribution infrastructure rises with each new update source.
The trend: Google is shifting information delivery from standalone email notifications toward feed-based aggregation across its services and users' preferred readers.