@Gargron The article completely misses a big part to the story. Before it was killed, Google Reader elbowed out many of the other RSS readers. It’s basically impossible to compete against Google; the 6 or 7 years Reader was in play was long enough to weaken the other players and push RSS far into the sidelines to the benefit of Google News. This is when I realized that Google was just a big corporate bully like any other publicly owned, profit-driven behemoth.