More than anything else I’ve read on the topic, Courtney Stanton does a great job of explaining why it’s so sad that Google are nerfing Google Reader

For me, this is the destruction of the only online space I truly give a shit about. (Sorry Twitter, Facebook, etc.) I’m actually really upset about this, as it’s eliminating a social space I’ve been participating in for several years.

He also does a terrific job of explaining why ‘plus’ isn’t a great replacement for the functionality.

I don’t care if Google wants Plus to get bigger, I care about me and my friends who seek to read and discuss the entire internet every day. Is there really no space for different kinds of people to form different kinds of social spaces in Google products? Are they really that fucking stupid about how communities work?

Or, as I suspect, is it just that Buzz and gReader aren’t nearly as effective as Plus at collecting data about my internet use?