I am honestly curious if the powers that be at Google who made that decision would still say it was a good idea to do so. Obviously they saved some money since it was unprofitable to operate, pushing people off RSS readers may have improved ad revenue, etc. But of all the product shutdowns that have happened at Google, none has come back to haunt Google more after the fact as Reader.

I wonder, in retrospect, if causing that backlash would still not be seen as a mistake.