Intent matters. Every time Google modifies their search algorithm, businesses that move down in the results are hurt. But I give them a pass because I believe that their intent is to improve search for everyone not to hurt those businesses. And I believe that they are generally successful in that intent.

Google’s Atom push penalizes readers whose aggregators don’t support it. James Robertson contends that Atom is nothing but a tax on aggregator developers. And Mark Bernstein asks Have you noticed how little new syndication software is showing up lately? So when I say Google owes us an explanation, I mean that Google needs to demonstrate good intent if they want to portray themselves as doing no evil.

I am for applications, not against Atom. Breaking current applications is bad. Providing new applications is good. Where are my new applications?