Gmail Rolls-Out RSS Reading: A Missed Opportunity?

There has been much speculation lately of how, when and where Google plans to roll-out RSS reading, especially with MSN and Yahoo! already making major moves in this area.

While Google's competitors have embraced RSS, Google was yet to make at least an indication of their future plans concerning RSS.

And then some Gmail users started reporting [also check to get a screenshot of this new feature] a new Gmail feature that lets you read RSS feeds, called Clips.

Other blogs soon picked up the news and the excitement started building up.

While not every Gmail user has access to Clips yet, Google has added a help page about this new feature.

Surprisingly, it's not really a fully-featured RSS reader. Clips shows you news headlines, Gmail tips, blogs, relevant sponsored links and the RSS feeds you add; all of this above your Gmail inbox.

As it seems right now, and especially considering the Clips screenshot, the feature won't satisfy many users.

Gmail simply rotates a limited numbder of headlines above your inbox, and these also include sponsored links, as commented by some earyl users. Not exactly something to make us very happy. I really don't want to go in to every feature an RSS aggregator needs today [check some of the more popular ones to see for yourself] to make itself useful to end-users, but this clearly is not it.

On the other hand, Google may yet surprise us.

The opportunities are certainly here:

a] Fully featured RSS aggregator, integrated into Gmail, offering RSS and e-mail consumption from a one-stop-point.

b] Using Google's search engine power, as already demonstrated in Gmail, to search your RSS feeds [those you subscribe to] and even filter them to create highly focused aggregated content streams.

c] Search through all indexed RSS feeds [no need to subscribe]; create filtered content streams; enable one-click Gmail RSS subscription.

d] Creating Google search strings and saving them as dynamic RSS feeds, constantly bringing you most relevant content in to your Gmail account, based on your search queries.

e] Integrating Gmail RSS and e-mail into Google's "predicted" new web browser.

f] Integrating blog publishing features for the most popular blog publishing solutions. OK, I might be getting a little carried away here, but still ...

Any other suggestions?