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I'd call it less of a bandwagon, and more of a tipping point. Google has killed lots of little services, beloved or otherwise, in addition to all the acquihires by various tech giants.

Google Reader has simply become a focal point for the closures of so many beloved products and services, because it's so comparatively ubiquitous that an abundance of nerds and literati are all sharing the same frustration simultaneously.

Though I'm also skeptical about trusting new Google products, I think the real lesson is being skeptical in general. If a product isn't part of a company's core business, and/or the business model is unsustainable or user-hostile, go in with eyes open, and ensure you have an exit strategy.

It's always better to be pleasantly surprised that a service is around than shocked when it shuts down. I agree in that the lesson should be to be skeptical, because it prevents people from being complacent with their information. I'd much rather pay for Reader or similar services from Google, but that would easily attract hate from the "Google always made free products" stance that's circulated around a lot.

Even if Google doesn't go back from killing Reader, they've seen the response that this particular shutdown has caused. It would be suicide for them to do it again (especially in this manner), so I reckon they'll be more cautious next time. Then again, fool me once...

Services that sell DRM'd content whose value isn't intrinsically linked to a particular device deserve extreme caution. Other than that, I can't really see a problem if you can take your content elsewhere.

The thing about Reader is that its appeal - while limited - was limited to a disproportionately influential segment of the internet. This made its shut down stupid for two reasons.

The first is that RSS's well-established failure to go mainstream meant that it was both a minor and clearly contained "threat" to advertising revenue. The second was that the people who did rely on it heavily are among the best sources of free publicity around. These are the people who take it upon themselves to deal with the fire hose head on, to filter for the best, and to promote their discoveries as widely as they can. And given that Google's entrance into the feed-synching sphere had driven every one else out, their departure left no clear replacement. Essentially, Google waded into the most vocal room in the world, replaced the infrastructure with their own, then shut the whole thing down without any apparent remorse or regret. And that left a lot of very noisy people in the lurch.

Basically, keeping Reader going was the cost of keeping the blogsphere happy. Having hit these people where it hurts, they can now expect to suffer a steady stream of sentiment saying "Google isn't trustworthy". For a business that is unusually dependent on a public perception of trustworthiness, this seems especially undesirable.

If a good substitute for Reader appears in the coming months, the problem may be a passing one. But if it doesn't, the lack will be keenly felt. And as long as bloggers, reporters, and other high-volume traffickers are feeling that pain, Google can expect to lose the benefit of the doubt anytime trust comes up. And even if a good replacement does emerge, Google loses the benefit of having potential critics dependent on (and enamored of) something that they - and they alone - were providing.

I wouldn't really call it a "mantra" and I think it's a legitimate concern.

[1] Google already built a product similar to Keep, it was called "Notebook" and it was shut down after five years.

[2] If you really believe Google and think that declining traffic is a legitimate reason for closing Reader, then surely Google+ should have been on the chopping block much earlier than Reader.

The Economist does a much better job than I could of explaining why we should be worried about Google's willingness to close products as beloved as Reader: http://www.economist.com/blogs/freeexchange/2013/03/utilitie...

[1] http://www.guardian.co.uk/technology/2013/mar/22/google-keep...

[2] http://www.buzzfeed.com/jwherrman/google-reader-still-sends-...

1. Yep, I'm aware of Notebook. At the same time, though, notebook was built on an aging stack and had no mobile presence when it was killed. Keep can either be considered a rehash or a reboot of it, but it's a new take on the idea. I'm still trying it out for myself, but I've at least found it partially more helpful than Notebook for mobile use.

2. Google+ won't be killed, because it's a social layer that's built into Google. It isn't a singular product, but is baked into everything Google is doing now that involves social. Sure, at this point in time, it appears that the service is fairly low - but where was Twitter 20 months after launch? I might be playing a "Google card" here, but it's still a relatively new social network, compared to its competition.

I only wish that if they were going to launch further products, they'd tag them "beta," like they did in the past. That way, if they shut them down, it would at least make sense from a "well, it was a trial" standpoint.

If Reader users were dropping off because Google crippled Reader, then the "users were dropping off" argument lacks teeth, though it does make for a great self-serving justification. First you make the product worse, then you point out that people aren't using it as much, then you kill it.

(This is, incidentally, the sort of strategy Republicans have w/r/t public services: they want people to think public services suck, so they start defunding or corrupting the relevant offices. Then the services become worse. This becomes a justification for more defunding or just shutting the things down.)

Google killed all its RSS support at once. Most people don't understand RSS anyway, so maybe this was a good thing. This doesn't make me worry any more than usual about their other products.

It's not only about Google Reader.

Did you see this comment https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=5374625 ?

I'm well aware of the other Google products killed during Spring/Fall cleaning runs, but they were all in a similar state of abandonment. It would be a worse practice to let old products sit by the wayside without development, yet be forced to keep them barely alive on life support. They aren't going to kill off Gmail, for example (though I have my doubts about something like Google Voice).

What about killing off Blogger? That competes with Google+

I have had the businesses of my customers and my own projects set back when 5 Google services were dropped.

You are missing the point. Google Reader was also an API.

And there has been this assumption with Google that they would keep their APIs available. Especially for something a innocuous as an RSS API. But that doesn't seem to be the case.

> You are missing the point. Google Reader was also an API.

A hacked up, reverse-engineered API. Since it was never official they haven't actually broken any promises.

Google has killed APIs before. Examples include Google Translate and private weather API.