Google Quick, Sick and Dead - Reader is ailing, but there's been a turnaround

Just because the social aspect of reader sucks, doesn't make the service useless. I use it extensivly to keep track of posts from dozens of sites. I really couldn't care less about the social aspect of reader, personally. I find it to be a useful aggregator of stories.

Why is google talk listed as dead? It's one of the services I use every day for chat and VoIP (V as in Voice and Video) because of their excellent cross-platform support (life sometimes ain't easy on linux).

Also the addition of AIM integration indicates it's very actively being worked on, unfortunately I don't know anybody still using that network.

Of course there is still the mysterious lack of VoIP on android, but does that make the whole service useless?