[jrnichols]

Users could make sense of it, but advertisers couldn't capitalize on it to shove ads at your eyeballs.

what I noticed as stabbing rss in the back was Google embracing and then eventually extinguishing Reader.

[BuckRogers]

Bingo. It's not driving revenue, it drives quality content (or at least click bait titles but that's going to be there regardless), so it has to go. Thankfully WordPress will keep this alive, it's probably a more significant factor behind RSS adoption than any browser.