Facebook Relay: An Evil And/Or Incompetent Attack On REST

Facebook's whole business model rests on controlling your ability to communicate with your own social circle. Rent-seeking behavior has always been their hallmark. This is why it was so darkly hilarious when Google killed Google Reader so it could focus all its resources on building a second-rate Facebook clone.

Google's answer to Facebook's growing power as a rentier was to give Facebook an entirely new dominion to charge rent against. Who could have built best-of-breed RSS support into the most popular browser in the world? Who owns news discovery today?