[ams6110]

The niche services that have been killed were (by definition) used by small groups, groups which tend to be over-represented here and on other tech-oriented outlets. Even a service like Reader was something that only a small number of people used (compared to e.g. gMail).

One way to look at it is that these services are now validated (if small) market needs that smaller entrepreneurs can pursue. In the past, entrepreneurs lived in fear that Google would muscle in on their specialty; now it looks like they not only won't do that, but are in fact disengaging from things that do not have mass market appeal.