Google Reader Died Because No One Would Run It

While the company said Google Reader was shut down because of a decline in usage, a major reason for that was owed to the fact that the project lacked an engineering lead, in part because no one stepped up to the task and because Google leadership wasn’t actively looking for one. Even when Google Reader was still public, without a leader it was functionally no longer a live project at Google, with engineers focusing more on Page’s larger projects like Android, Chrome, Google Plus, and Search.