Lack of development gives birth to RSS revolution?

Steve Gillmor's latest article makes the claim that because MS has been focused on fixing IE's security holes they unwittingly paved the way for RSS. Hmm, I'm not sure. But I'll say one thing for sure, because MS has been abcent from this space there has been some great devlopment in this area.

Gillmor cites Pluck, the IE RSS plugin, as one example and Safari as another.

I'm not sure Gillmor really makes is case though. Not that I don't agree, here's my take. MS has been distracted with Longhorn (it slices, it dices, it juillenes) and security problems to be able to pay attention to RSS and blogging. Now it's got their attention, but even Robert Scoble doesn't have a MS service to post his popular blog. In the meantime some fantastic server tools and client tools have been developed. Now that MS has our attention I hope they pretty much stay clear and just do things like add RSS to SharePoint. Sure native IE RSS capabilities would be nice, but I like NewsGator and I think the level of competition is keeping development pushing ahead.

Opinion: When Microsoft abandoned Internet Explorer development to concentrate on fixing the browser's security vulnerabilities, it opened the door to the emerging RSS revolution.

Internet Explorer has come under attack in recent weeks not just from malicious coders but also from CERT (the U.S. Computer Emergency Readiness Team) and now, the most devious opponent of all, RSS.