Gmail could easily be a Reader. Email is a mechanism which drops content into your inbox. It obviously requires someone's pushing it. RSS on the other hand is

Gmail could easily be a Reader. Email is a mechanism which drops content into your inbox. It obviously requires someone's pushing it. RSS on the other hand is a protocol which facilitates the dropping of the content into a reader. So an email client by its very nature a RSS reader (several email clients provide this feature, or at least they used to). The question is not whether G+ could be an alternate. The question is whether we are looking at the world where the RSS would become the backbone of services like Lexus Nexus which is used by media specialist and/or people with resource ($$) ... or would RSS remain a pipe which is available for average Joe to easily "get" the information however and whenever they wish.