RSS is a bit of a relic of an earlier, more open web, and Google Reader was at the time the best, most popular RSS client. Killing it was bad for users, and ba

RSS is a bit of a relic of an earlier, more open web, and Google Reader was at the time the best, most popular RSS client. Killing it was bad for users, and bad for RSS, but it was also a very visible marker of a shift towards a more closed, proprietary web. So it's not just "having Google Reader was better than not having it, I'm mad", but more about regret for what might have been if we'd all gone down a different path. The Google that, rather than killing Reader, had invested resources in it might have done other things. Example: Right at the same time they were killing off Reader, they were removing XMPP/Jabber support from Google Talk. Is it plausible Google might have continued backing open standards like XMPP and RSS? And if they had...what would the internet be like now? It's certainly clear that RSS is much less popular than it was; could Google's support for the standard have prevented some of that? In short: People are upset about Google Reader as such (I use bazqux.com, it's just as good as Google Reader ever was) but what it implied and represented.