Because of trust. When Google started reader, and more importantly, when they put the sign out front saying "come hither for a hassle free web RSS client that k

Because of trust. When Google started reader, and more importantly, when they put the sign out front saying "come hither for a hassle free web RSS client that keeps a backup of all the feeds you visit even if they go down and everyone said "hells yeah" because it was from a web supergiant and those don't very often go under since 2001. So we got dependent. And they pulled the rug out. People only got dependent on the assumption it would be persistent. Google's entire business is making things that don't make them money but give them more avenues for ads. And your freaking news feed from Google is the best place I can imagine for targeted advertising and to figure out a users browsing habits. My emails are stuffed with spam, my google searches could be anyone, but you can reliably say I'm browsing my reader feeds and I'm interested in the articles I am opening and those are the ultimate target for advertising. I'd say something about how social networks factor in, but I don't use any them (or Twitter) so I could care less. But I highly doubt that Google got its desired outcome from killing Reader - they lost a vast swathe of technical users and lost confidence from even more, and they won't see these people move over to consuming content on Google Plus because they don't give a crap how many dog treats the neighbors dog ate yesterday, they care about xkcd strips or gamasutra article feeds. You get a wall of shit on Google+ that you can at least curate in the RSS world. Why I would ever want to use it I have no idea. If I want to talk or interact with people, I'll use XMPP or SMTP. If I want to consume textual or image based media with consistent publication, I'll use RSS. Notice how I keep quoting protocols - because they are open and interoperable. I can expect other people to be ably to reliably target said protocols and distribute their content to anyone that wants it because you have a myriad of tools to access them. That share on G+ button only works with G+, and like the article said, Google wants you stuck on their services. So I switched the default search engine on my grandparents, mother, cousins, and neighbors to duckduckgo. I'm looking for free web email services that compete with gmail to drop that too, because who knows when Google will rip that rug out from under us as well. "Why are you sending emails? Just send G+ messages! You are all on G+ right? It is expensive to keep a copy of all those email attachments!"