So Google made a free service, and when it was gone, everyone realized they weren't willing to pay for it. Because it wasn't valuable to them. This is the real problem that RSS has.
There are enough people paying for RSS-related services to support multiple for-profit companies in the space.
If that's true, then RSS is not dead at all and Google didn't "kill" it. There just aren't a lot of people that want it.
It’s not dead and that’s a correct statement, though perhaps with one needed clarification. Google gave RSS a lot of mainstream visibility with Reader which it now lacks. I think that partially explains its lack of popularity and is the reason why people write articles like this saying that Google “killed” RSS.