[slyall]

No because if anything (the effect might have been small) it reduced the power of the open web and many websites (which Google tied togeather) and encouraged people to go to walled gardens ( Facebook, Instagram, twitter, etc ) which are controlled by other companies.

[flir]

A lot of heavyweight bloggers and aggregators used Reader in their toolchains - it was very good at surfacing trending content. I don't think the effect on the blogging ecosystem was small.

I could believe they were clearing a path for G+ and Discover on Android.

[freeAgent]

What's frustrating is that Reader would have been complementary to Google+. It could have served as a huge funnel by which users could discover content to share on Google+. That's how I used to use Reader (though at the time I found content that I shared other places, such as Facebook, Digg, or Reddit).