Until this summer, when a competing format called Atom debuted, RSS (Really Simple Syndication) was “the” way to syndicate news. While RSS is still the general preferred method, Atom got a recent lift from Google when it announced that their blog section would offer Atom news feeds. Dave Winer, a fellow at the Berkman Center for Internet & Society at Harvard Law, suggested the two formats work together to syndicate news on the web, as opposed to competing with each other.

The Internet Engineering Task Force (IETF) - an Internet standards committee - would most likely oversee any merger of the two formats, CNET News reports.