Site feeds are getting the shaft

Google’s Webmaster Blog officially recommends offering gadgets over feeds.

Q: Why is it better to create gadgets rather than create feeds?
A: First, gadgets are much more flexible. As a publisher, you control the format of your content. Second, gadgets are by nature more interactive. They can be built with flash, HTML or AJAX, and are generally much more interesting than feeds. Finally, your users can customize a gadget to their liking, making your content a lot more targeted.

Steve Rubel points out that Yahoo! is launching new sites without feeds (found via: Read/Write Web).

In the past few weeks Yahoo has rolled out three major new web sites – Yahoo! Food, Yahoo! Advertising and Yahoo! TV. They’re great sites, but none of them has feeds.

I can’t say I fully agree with either decision. I also don’t fully disagree. ...It’s something to think about.