after ten years I would say it turned out to be a good decision, at leats for me.

Google Reader was "just a reader" and nothing more. They did not invest in it, it was stagnated but as it was working ok, I didn't have motivation to look for alternatives.

When Google Reader was announced to be shut down, it gave a great motivation to other reader's authors to develop their products. I would never replace current Inoreader with its insanse features with Google Reader again.