[WiseWeasel]

What are "influencers" going to do about it? Give Reader a bad review? Complain about the death of a product no one knew existed? I don't see how they have any leverage in this situation. The comparison with Microsoft's Word Count incident seems weakly relevant.

[nlawalker]

>> What are "influencers" going to do about it? Give Reader a bad review?

No, but you may start seeing instances of phrases like "I wonder how long it will be until FeatureX/ProductY gets the boot like Reader did" or "Perhaps this product will languish for years without innovation like Reader" or "Maybe Google will opt to ignore users of this product too" in the press related to Google products. Next time Google kills a product, the media will reflect about how it's "just as bad as what they did with Reader in 2013." Killing widely used products is now something Google does; it is a behavior they are now strongly associated with.

In terms of influencers, it's not about the individual product, it's about the behavior of the company that operated it. Don't piss off the people that give you free advertising by taking out features they like, even if they're the only ones who use them.

>> a product no one knew existed

While I find that a stretch, the point the article was making is that no one needs to know of the existence of Reader for this to have a negative impact on Google. Except for the influencers, who did.

[anigbrowl]

Well, I've been a strong promoter of Google's products over the years; I recommend them to others, show people how to use them, use them for project organization (thus pushing my usage pattern out to the rest of a team) and so on. I'm not about to suddenly stop doing that, but I feel an awful less invested than I did 48 hours ago.

[OGinparadise]

View Google at a new light, not give them the benefit of a doubt. If Google does something, they'll try to see what's the catch. Google has gotten a lot of good, free press