I heard an interesting theory the other day: blog viability declined because Google killed Reader. Which indirectly ends up poisoning Google's biggest well, sin

I heard an interesting theory the other day: blog viability declined because Google killed Reader. Which indirectly ends up poisoning Google's biggest well, since blogs are an important source of relevant cross-domain links. I'm somewhat skeptical, it seems a little too poetic to blame Google's ultimate downfall on a decision that was notably hated at the time. But it's plausible. If you want it to be a conspiracy theory, you can posit that killing off independent blogs was the intent, to convince bloggers to migrate to Google Plus.