Flame-bite? The title is the equivalent of saying 'the Netscape web browser is a failure' (which is only ridiculous to point out because it's so obvious).
How frequently do you see Atom feeds published?
In those cases do you ever Atom published without an accompanying RSS feed?
At least Google APIs are atom-based. And I do see a lot of atom feeds, although you're right there are usually along with RSS. However, AJAX is not a fialure simply because there is always a no-script version of the same page.
There's two parts to Atom, Atom itself which is like a better RSS and AtomPub. He's talking about the latter.
From Wikipedia: "The Atom Syndication Format is an XML language used for web feeds, while the Atom Publishing Protocol (AtomPub or APP) is a simple HTTP-based protocol for creating and updating web resources."
Atom itself is doing fine. Readers have to cater to RSS for historical reasons but for most producers, particularly in non-standard (not "blogging") contexts, it's a waste of time.
How frequently do you see Atom feeds published? In those cases do you ever Atom published without an accompanying RSS feed?