Google killing of Reader was the symbolic point where the business plan of the internet moved from "Let's sell stuff to users!" to "Let's sell users to advertisers!".
It was when business plans from moved from letting users control what they consume to being in control of what users consume.
The biggest is that they are trying to maximize revenue/profits. In controlling the flow of information to people they are in better control of that. A lot has been studied about this.
I didn't realize there were other motivations until FB started to publish studies they carried out on people. Some of those (which they published awhile ago) were around the manipulation of users emotions and their ability to target voting groups (to increase people going to vote in target groups) around elections.
It's all advertising all the time.
Generally speaking when Google prevents and limits what end users can control -- the offending product gets worse and eventually dropped.
At least to most I've spoken with on the subject (a few dozen, so informal straw poll), killing Google Reader turned people's opinion of Google from scrappy startup to untrustworthy behemoth.
You can add me to that informal poll. I moved to Feedly, but Google Reader was my go to for a whole lot of years. My opinion of Google changed the day they announced its demise. I am probably an outlier but the only way I want to consume content on the web is via RSS feeds. Allows me to curate what I see and if subscribed sites start delivering me poor content, I drop them from the feed list.
What’s your point?
Other companies give you less privacy, but more functionality exposed to the user.
Of course, without Apple's walled gardens, google might lock down their stuff too, no longer needing to have a bit of openness to differentiate themselves.