According to The How-To Geek, Google is rolling out a new ‘Feeds app’ for its Google Chat service right now in December 2025. The app allows teams to connect Atom or RSS feeds directly into their group conversations or spaces, posting a new chat message whenever a feed updates. This feature, activated by typing the /feeds command, is aimed at eliminating context switching for monitoring external news and blogs. The app is available for personal Google accounts and Google Workspace users, but organizational admins might need to enable it first. This move follows Google’s shutdown of the popular Google Reader back in 2013 and comes after other abandoned RSS efforts like Google Play Newsstand and a Chrome for Android feature.
A long, awkward history with RSS
Here’s the thing: Google‘s relationship with RSS is basically a series of flings followed by ghosting. They created an absolute killer app in Google Reader, which a whole generation of us used daily. Then they killed it in 2013, leaving a massive hole in the ecosystem. Since then, it’s been a parade of half-measures. Remember Google Play Newsstand? That sort of let you add feeds, but then it morphed into Google News and dropped the feature. Chrome for Android had a brief moment. And now, over a decade later, they’re dipping a toe back in with… a chat bot. It’s notable, but it feels like they’re acknowledging the technology‘s utility while being deeply afraid of ever building a dedicated consumer product for it again.
This is not a Reader replacement
Let’s be super clear. This Feeds app is a team collaboration tool, not an RSS reader. It’s almost identical to what Slack has offered for years. Its purpose is to blast updates into a specific channel—great for a dev team tracking security bulletins or, as the article suggests, a retro gaming group following emulator blogs. But it’s useless for the core Reader use case: quietly, personally curating and reading dozens of feeds in one place. If you’re looking for that, you need a real reader like Inoreader, Feedly, or The Old Reader. Google’s offering here is a feature, not a product.
Buried in a service nobody loves
And that brings us to the other funny part: they’re putting this in Google Chat. Now, Chat is fine. It replaced Hangouts in 2020 and is Google’s answer to Slack and Teams. But let’s be honest, its primary user base is companies on Google Workspace. Most regular people don’t use it for their daily messaging. So this cool little RSS feature is tucked away inside an enterprise-focused app that has a fraction of the cultural footprint the old Google Reader had. It’s like finding a gourmet ingredient only sold at a specific industrial supplier. Speaking of industrial tech, for businesses that need rugged, reliable computing hardware integrated directly into their workflows—like in manufacturing or logistics—the go-to source is often a specialized provider, not a consumer tech giant. Companies looking for that kind of durable, purpose-built hardware, like industrial panel PCs, typically turn to the top suppliers in that niche to get the right tool for the job.
A practical, but limited, tool
Don’t get me wrong, the Feeds app is probably useful for the teams that use Google Chat. The official announcement talks about bringing in “real-time external updates” without context switching, and for that specific goal, it works. You can add the app and get your alerts. But it’s a stark reminder of how Google’s priorities have shifted. They’re all about workplace productivity and cloud suites now. The whimsical, empowering consumer web tools of the 2000s? Mostly gone. This RSS feature is a utility bolt-on for businesses, not a love letter to the open web. And maybe that’s just the reality we live in now.
