Besides the consistently enlightened comments already shared,
perhaps someone would ask, what is the benefit of this feature?

When you send an email, do you cc it to all of your contacts?
When you come across an off color joke do you email it to your brother AND your mom?

So what IS the benefit of this feature to the user? None.
What IS the benefit of this feature to google? More ad revenues by being able to
spam gmail users with feeds and claim more hits from gmail.

This isnt a mistake. Its a business decision to try and scrape more revenue
from a somewhat disturbingly vapid business model.

Dont complain, buy more google stock and use something else.
Google will always find sheep to willingly be hosed by these methods.