I thought it was straight-forward: he wants to understand what it was about Reader that users liked, so he can work on incorporating them into Google+. Since he does not have the power to save Reader, he's telling people this is not the venue to complain about its shutdown.

That's funny, I assumed it was a PR move to make Google appear responsive when they inevitably add an RSS-ish feature to syndicate news subscriptions into google+ feeds, as opposed to appearing like a malevolent plan to kill a beloved service to push more people into google+.

Hence it's counter-productive to mention the shutdown in negative terms, as that associates the two efforts in a way that underscores the latter interpretation.

If it came from an executive or a press release, perhaps I would have assumed that. But it came from an engineer.

"an engineer", Chief Architect, same difference, right?

Where I work, Chief Architects do not make decisions about killing products. That happens higher than them. Their responsibility is engineering the architecture of their product. So, yes, I think it's accurate to refer to a Chief Architect as "an engineer."

> "Chief Architects do not make decisions about killing products."

No, but if you were trying to convince people you weren't forcing them into Google+, but Google+ was presenting alternatives out of their sincere love for the people, you wouldn't use the person who made the decision now would you?

And who better to stand up and ask "how can we help" than one of the people who will later take to the Google Blog to say "look what we added to Google+ because you asked for it?"

An event's possibility is not evidence for its occurrence.

The odd thing to me is that he phrased it as "many Google products", which sounds as if he's thinking about leaving the Google+ product.

I see both points here. My response would be similar to nicksergeant's. The parts of Google Reader I found useful were the parts where you could read RSS feeds. Will RSS be incorporated into Google+ somehow? I don't really understand what else he's getting at.

i also think this line of thinking is silly. the Googler is assuming a set of features is what made Google Reader the best RSS reader on the market. while that is true in essence (features do add up to the overall product) i don't think any 1 feature in reader was killer. rather, the collection of all the features made the app itself killer.

In Mountain View, all problems are engineering problems.

Even when they aren't.

I think he's asking what about Reader specifically made it more useful than the dozens of other RSS readers out there.

UI-less sync scheme between numerous devices, simpler application backends as the work of actually aggregating (querying and parsing feeds, notifying, ...) was handled by Reader and the client just had to implement a UI to that.

All I can gather from Google's recent moves is: "useful != profitable"... and Google's more interested in profit than utility now.

I have to say I'm kind of glad. I have some AI ideas that I think are going to be killer. Currently in the early development stage. If they are focusing more on profit probably they can get distracted enough to not see me coming.

Currently worried that they are beefing up their AI pursuits because of the recent AI hires which could mean I don't even have a chance. Lets se what happens.

I don't get it either. I mean, if he really wants to make me happy but can only build in the context of G+, make a "Reader" tab and open up Reader in an iframe that takes up 90% of the page (outer frame optional). There's nothing about G+'s layout (or mission?) that will be conducive to feed reading.

This is like asking me what I like about burgers so you can make a better salad.

Maybe the intent was just to draw attention to his product? You liked the Reader? Now, that it is going to be killed, tell us what you liked about it so we can add these features to G+. And by the way, look how awesome we are, we care about your needs, you can already start using G+, don't wait until we add features from the Reader, because this will never happen.