There still is no replacement for Google Reader. The difference is that there was a community around Reader’s social features. That only really works with wide adoption, and it’s a lot easier for people to adopt a Google product than a random company x one. Today, there are many replacements with the mechanical features of browsing & sync, but the community will never come back.

The other problem was that Google killing Reader was a signal to the broader web to move away from RSS. RSS has kind of limped along since then.