[barrkel]

We already had a fully featured RSS reader supported by a large company not lacking in money or resources. It got closed down because the company had lots of money and resources: it wasn't a strategic product, and any contribution it could have made to revenue would have been immaterial.

In the medium term, I think canning Reader has hurt Google amongst the technically literate. It certainly has pushed Google from the 'creepy but mostly good' to just 'creepy' for me. It's a notch above Facebook now, and no longer worthy of a logged in session - relegated to a secondary browser, I can feel free to block all Google-related third party requests.

As for a Reader replacement, I'm currently going with Ino Reader. Free and unlimited (thus far). I don't know if or how it will make money, but it's been the best replacement I've tried yet.

And "there were already a ton" of readers? No. Almost all readers had to differentiate themselves from Reader, because it was so good. There's a massive gap in the market, such as it is, right now. It should and will be filled by a small company, probably a lifestyle business.