I don’t think that either browser is attempting to get people to switch from their favorite aggregator to the browser, and I apologize if what I wrote made that an easy inference to make.

I think the point is that both browsers make it easier for users to notice and subscribe to feeds, and that’s great (see previous posts on this topic).

Of COURSE I’m not suggesting we’d “be better off if FF and IE did NOT provide this one-click support,” and I have a hard time figuring out how you may have gotten that idea.

I’m just noting that Randy is correct that trying to read a feed in either browser natively is pretty unpleasant compared to a tool well-designed for feeds.

I think this will change in future versions. I think that both browsers (and others) are going to offer branded online accounts with tools similar to del.icio.us, BlogLines, Flickr, and MediaFire that will integrate with the browser and make the feed experience that much easier.

Since Bloglines is also making a big thing of the ease with which both IE7 and FF2 will add a feed to Bloglines, it strikes me that neither browser is in any way trying to “take people back” from the other readers.

Maybe I’m missing the importance (or failing to look a gift horse in the mouth?). Both browsers are making it a lot easier for people to subscribe to feeds. Neither browser automatically assumes that they should push you to someone else’s reader, but FF at least makes it easy to go there. Would we be better off if FF and IE did NOT provide this one-click support?

Heck, Google’s HTML rendering is a lousy way to read a PDF document, too, but I’m glad they provide the option.