[burgreblast]

I never get the moaning about killing Reader. It was never about popularity or user experience.

Reader had to be killed because it [was seen as] a suboptimal ad monetization engine. Page views were superior.

Was Google going to support minimizing ads in any way?

[theptip]

Right. Reader was not a case of apathy and failure to see the product’s value.

It was Google clearly seeing the product’s value, and killing it because that value was detrimental to their ads business.