1. RSS readers everywhere
2. Google comes out with one
3. Other RSS readers wither on the vine b/c everyone uses #2
4. Google decides to sunset their RSS reader.
5. ???
Is that wrong?
- RSS readers are _dead simple_ to build. If you're an average programmer you could make an MVP within 2 days.
- Many of the RSS readers are/were free. I don't think Google having Reader caused any great migrations, but even if it did I doubt it would have caused other readers to implode or anything like that.
I _believe_ what happened is that Reader had a small but vocal user group who were (understandably) upset at the sunsetting, and caused a big hubbub about it. I _suspect_ many of today's Reader complainers have never actually used Reader, and are just piggy-backing off some low-hanging Google bashing fruit.
Again, I'll happily nod at the badness of Google killing off Reader, but I intensely dislike the amount of hyperbole in the statement that Google "killed RSS". It's a thing that never took off. That's all that happened. It's still accessible, there are many clients you could use, and so on - it just so happens that most sites don't bother creating an RSS feed.