It’s surprising at which to shut down their product, nobody know the reason why? at least they are giving other merchant the market opportunity
They decided that G+ was a better fit, and had more marketable potential. Not sure I agree with them, but that’s their choice.
That and I don’t think they knew how to take GReader and make money off of it (unlike G+). I would have been perfectly fine paying a subscription to keep GReader, too bad that wasn’t an option.
The back story is getting interesting – one of the managers for the product has spoken on quora: http://www.quora.com/Google-Reader-Shut-Down-March-2013/Why-is-Google-killing-Google-Reader ; not official answer but it seems to be quite plausible.
Not sure where I’m going yet – Google Reader itself was nice but the ecosystem around it mattered much more to me. I could easily subscribe to feed in my browsers. These feeds showed up in Flipboard where I could read it like a magazine. I could star things in Flipboard that got pushed back to Google Reader and then read by IFTTT and pulled into Evernote. Lots of people innovating in the space but it is going to take a while for a clear winner to emerge that the ecosystem will congeal around.
Seems that this thread is starting to atrack fluffers all around… I’m closing it.