I also missed Google Reader. I’ve got a paid subscription to The Old Reader now, which is a lot like Google Reader and which is much faster and more responsive than it was a couple of years ago. Unfortunately consolidation around the big platforms means there are fewer independent sites worth subscribing to, and those sites are still slowly ditching their feeds, too.
I’ve been frustrated by some recent updates to some of the Google apps I still use; it’s very odd to see that even so, I’m only aware of a tiny sliver of the upheaval and chaos that’s been churning around Google all this time. Each one of those dead projects represents a substantial fraction of the working life of a fair number of people. All that money, all that time and effort, all that human capital, all that opportunity cost - toast.
