To reiterate, don't focus too much on Reader. It's just a convenient example. If you've never been a Google Business or Apps for Education Customer, it's very h

To reiterate, don't focus too much on Reader. It's just a convenient example. If you've never been a Google Business or Apps for Education Customer, it's very hard to explain the awkward position you're put in. No Support Everything is rolling update, regardless of how it affects your workflow or organization Regardless of whether you use it or not, changes happen (addition/removal) Google is incredibly frustrating to do business with as a paying customer, much less as a non-paying customer. However, their influence over the web at the moment is too strong. Gmail and spam filters are a perfect example; saying you can just host your own mail server is ignorant, willfully or otherwise, and your only safe bets are Google or Microsoft. There are workarounds, sure, but that assumes such workarounds will continue to work. Google is a very capricious company to deal with as a customer, paying or otherwise. It's not about valuing apps, it's that Google has for some time maintained an attitude of "we're google, where else are you gonna go?", and the problem is that there is some truth to this. That's what the article is complaining about, that's what I'm complaining about. Market forces really don't enter into it at Google's size and scope. Others are just as guilty (Amazon, Microsoft), but right now we're talking about Google.