Oddly enough, this was a watershed thing for me as well. It was when I finally had it driven into my head that it's mistake to rely too much on anything Google offers.

I say "oddly enough" because I never really used Google Reader. I did (and still do) use RSS heavily, but I use a different reader for it. But Google's actions struck me because RSS was such a fundamental aspect of the way things worked that axing Reader without offering a replacement seem to me like them axing search itself without offering a replacement.

If Reader can suffer such a fate, anything Google does can as well.