At the time, Iran had for a couple of years implemented an internet censorship platform, blocking access to much of the internet. Nearly all international news agencies (CNN, BBC, NPR, etc.) were inaccessible; so were most of "web 2.0".
Despite the widespread censorship, there was a large active community of independent blogs, non-sanctioned news sites, and small e-publications. The reason this structure could thrive was that even though these websites and weblogs were blocked, they were accessible through Google Reader.
Because of the way Google services were implemented, the government could not block Reader without also blocking GMail and Google Search, which was not an option. As long as authors had a way (like a not-yet-blocked VPN or a friend outside the country they could email to) to post articles, people could read them, like them, comment on them, etc. Iran's censorship was to significant degree neutralized by this setup. The community was large, strong, and thriving. They even had their own jargon: the community was referred to as blogestan [1]; Google Reader was called Gooder, etc.
And then, Google, for some (now obviously incorrect, but ultimately irrelevant to my point) financial calculation, decided to kill Reader. Just like that, overnight, the breadth of the web accessible to an average Iranian decreased by orders of magnitude. The entire community of freethinking authors and their followers disappeared. The only news websites remaining accessible were those sanctioned by the government, pushing the official narrative.
Google put a large nail in the coffin of internet freedom in Iran. For that, I will never forgive them.
[1] with the -stan suffix, https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/-stan