Dave just posted an email he received about Google crawling for a couple new files: index.rdf and atom.xml. Here's a quote:
Google is starting to crawl for two syndication formats, but is not
crawling for the third, most popular format, that's supported by most
of the other tech companies and major publications.
The third format is obviously RSS. There is nowhere near enough
evidence to come to any conclusions about Google purposely indexing
certain formats above others.
There is nothing new about google indxing news feeds, as long as they were linked to from a web page. What is
different here is Google looking for specific feeds, regardless of
links. Definitely an interesting topic, and one I will be watching
closely.
Abe has also done some research into this topic.
