[Sujan]

I don't fully agree:

> Then came Flipboard, Prismatic, and all the other content discovery platforms that became smarter than just Google Reader in lipstick.

Lots of people don't want content discovery or anything smart. They just want a list of articles from feeds.

> Google Reader, the product, seems to be a textbook example of how an incumbent failed to head where the puck was going.

Reader didn't join the party on all the new-and-social stuff, and just stayed a usable product in the form it promised when it started. For me, personally, that was not a failure, but a great thing.

[xaotikdesigns]

Agreed. I generally dislike most suggestions as they tend to pick the wrong reasons for suggesting them. I'd rather find my own content via the blogs I subscribe to, and following the articles that I like to their sources and going from there.

[snogglethorpe]

Absolutely. "Content discovery" says "vague, fuzzy, incomplete, inconsistent, not under user control."

There's a market for such a thing, certainly, but it's not the same thing as an RSS reader, and if you need the latter, the former isn't going to do the job.

[wslh]

> Lots of people don't want content discovery or anything smart. They just want a list of articles from feeds.

I would add that now content discovery is very boring, I don't remember receiving previously unknown recommendations in a field that I know.

[beigelightning]

I completely agree. I am currently trying The Old Reader and Feedly. The Old Reader is close to the Google Reader experience, but lacks the mobile companion. Feedly is nice, but it adds too much Flipboard style functionality that I really don't want. Having Google Reader synced in the web browser and on my mobile devices is honestly a perfect product needing no evolution for me.