1. It dominated its niche because it was a legitimately good product, not just because it was free. There have been many free alternatives for a long time, even before Reader. For example if every Mac user actually used the built in RSS readers that ship with OS X they would have eclipsed the Reader userbase.
2. The fact that it is a small niche (and more importantly isn't really growing) probably better explains the "lack" of alternatives.
The fact of the matter is that when Apple finally kills off the Mac Pro there actually won't be (lega) alternatives, unlike the current situation with RSS where there are plenty of alternatives (its just that Google's was way better). This is my whole point: Google won on quality, decided it wasn't worth it for them, and then exited. Had they priced it from the beginning (either through ads or freemium or whatever), they would have still won in my opinion, and then still killed it. Reader winning and going away has nothing to do with free in my mind: there is just no universe where Google would continue supporting an RSS product because RSS is not a big enough market.
I guess my point is that Google would have "killed the space" no matter what, not because they made it free.
> The fact of the matter is that when Apple finally kills off the Mac Pro there actually won't be (lega) alternatives,
I don't know what you are talking about, the Mac Pro is a tower computer, there are many alternatives today and there will be many alternatives when the Mac Pro goes away, Apple doesn't dominate the tower computer market.
> Its good for Google to realize that this isn't worth their time so they can focus their resources on things only they can do (like cars that drive themselves and whatnot) and leave these tasks for the rest of us where these user numbers and profits are meaningful.
this is ridiculous the last few days on HN were filled with alternatives. Google allows you to export your feeds so nothing was lost.