[jrm4]

And it strikes me as outrageously naive to accept this theory on its face.

[EVyesnoyesnoyes]

There is no reason at all to assume that the blog post was put in place to put google reader in a better light.

And the original comment is weird anyway. Google had billions of views with and without google reader.

The normal person doesn't use a RSS Reader at all. Even in my nerdy / tech group not everyone uses one.

Feedly apparently hast 15 million users across the world.

[jrm4]

I think there's very good reason to look past one blog post, people, come on.

If I am a higher-up executive in Google, I'm not going to much care what the numbers on RSS look like now, it takes less half a brain to understand that Google Reader has at least a CHANCE at chewing into the bottom line hard if it takes off -- even if those chances are slim. I'd kill it quickly as possible. If I can do so early, with little fanfare, even better.