One counter-point is that the accessibility of Reader due to its presence Google ecosystem also grew the global user base of RSS aggregators. Which is to say it

One counter-point is that the accessibility of Reader due to its presence Google ecosystem also grew the global user base of RSS aggregators. Which is to say its not a given that those using RSS through Google Reader would be using RSS at all if it never existed. It's also not a given that the sync back-ends built in this Never-Reader parallel universe would've matched what would got with Reader in terms of reliability and speed, since regardless of how you feel about them Google infrastructure is best in class.