Will Microsoft RSS integration be the end of clean syndication?

RSS (Really Simple Syndication / Rich Site Summary) has been around for quite some time. Recently we’ve witnessed thousands of blogs and news sources embrace RSS for it’s simplicity and ability to display information quickly to millions of readers. For readers, RSS provides the opportunity and convenience of subscribing to hundreds of individual websites / blogs within a single news aggregator. The old days of systematically clicking through bookmarks is over.

Recent news of Microsoft’s announcement concerning RSS integration into it’s upcoming Longhorn operating system bring a few questions to the table. Microsoft, which dominates much of the professional and personal desktop computing market, is routinely targeted by adware / malware / virus writers. With the advancement in RSS technology including enclosures, is it possible that our hassle-free news reading days are over? Are news aggregators going to be choked by pop-up advertisements and adware / malware exploits? I can already picture it… Reading breaking news and scrolling down to the next story only to be subjected to a full advertisement for Cialis.

Now that RSS is being adopted by Microsoft, should we all start biting our nails? Everyone from grade schoolers to grandma will start using RSS. If I were an adware / malware coder, I would definitely be brewing up ideas on delivering the goods via RSS. Is it time to start looking for alternatives?

Sound off on your thoughts and or predictions.