Math is useless without a good model. The article challenges their model and rightly so.
Maybe you don't realise how many they are?
I mean, your very next line admits total ignorance:
>I don't use RSS or Google Reader, I've never even seen it
Thing is, people who have successful technical blogs know that lots of people come from Google Reader.
So even if it's a minority, it's a pretty important minority in the business.
They do: Contributors (curators) are, grossly, 9% of total users (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/1%25_rule_%28Internet_culture%2...)
The few that cared posted their angry rants, and noone cared. Noone commented. It's a complete non-issue.
And even if you accept the premise of the article, that the ones who care about Google Reader are influencers, what exactly does that mean in practice? Google doesn't have very many services that regular people use. There's search, and you'll never get people to stop using that. There's gmail, and you'll never get people to stop using that. There's Google+, and you'll never get people to use that, because they've got Facebook, and it's only nerds on G+ anyway.
I get the abstract point of the article, that if you upset influential people, they'll badmouth your product, and the Microsoft Word example made a lot of sense, because it stopped people from buying the latest version of it and sticking with what they had.
But that scenario doesn't apply here. Those of you who are upset about this, exactly which Google services will you stop promoting to your friends, and which alternatives will you suggest?
The idea that you can't rely on Google to keep services around is a bit of a chilling one for many and too much of that vibe may well mean that established companies and smart startups are more careful about what services they depend on (and who they get them from).
But we're not at that point yet... and Google is hardly alone in the general rug-pulling-out-from-under-you trend these days.
The main issue for RSS seems to be that no one bothered to explain it in direct terms to all the tens of millions of people who rushed into the web starting around 2007.
Though, the majority of people here aren't using Google Reader - so I guess I'm a minority there - but they're using "Bloglovin".
They're pretty large it seems.
I realize I won't be getting things like the recommendations, but I've got plenty of feeds going presently. There may well be other features others love that I've been missing out on, but obviously I won't be missing them :-P
The problem is that some minorities count more than others, because they are influential (vocal, if you prefer).
The big question, which TFA states but provides no evidence for, is whether pushing these influencers away from Reader also pushes them away from other services, too.
My personal opinion is, by itself, no; but if you make Reader the frosting on a cake of discontinued products, it just might. Now, the general unease of "Will this thing I care about get terminated next spring?" becomes a much stronger fear, because it is tied to the personal emotions of Reader being killed.
The vast majority are just shrugging and not caring one bit.
Only Google has the actual numbers on how many people are using their Reader, and they simply did the math. End of story. It's not going to affect Google one bit that they cancelled a tiny non-profitable product.