I used to have ~100 blogs I followed in Google Reader, then when Reader was killed I drifted away from many of them. I wonder how many authors lost large numbers of readers because of that sad event.
Many of the people I followed on Reader moved to Twitter after Google took it down and mimicked its social functions there. I'd wager they're still either using RSS readers or jury-rigging Twitter into being something like it.
That interpretation only makes sense if you think Google would rather have more good little click monkeys than organizing good content...
> "While the product has a loyal following, over the years usage has declined."
[0] https://googleblog.blogspot.com/2013/03/a-second-spring-of-c...
While not exactly as strong as a conspiracy theory, I think they were well aware of what they were doing, and RSS was in the "best if absent" feature category.