Google+ architect: What was so great about Reader anyway?

The chief architect for Google+ is asking Google Reader users what they liked about the due-for-execution RSS service.

The request for information comes after Google said it would kill the popular web-based RSS reader on 1 July 2013 as part of a round of "spring cleaning".

Google is now pumping the community for information on how Reader's ashes features can be scattered across other Google services.

"I have a question for avid Google Reader users: what are the aspects of the way Reader works that made it so useful for you?" Yonatan Zunger wrote on his G+ page. "I'd like to understand better what the concrete things about Reader were which people found the most useful, because I'd like to integrate those ideas into future versions of many Google products, and try to capture that value."

Responses will help Zunger "think about good ways to capture that usefulness in the modern world," he wrote, and encouraged people to reply to his post with their opinions.

If anyone uses the thread to lobby against the shutdown of the service, their comments will be deleted, and if anyone complains about the censoring of those comments they will be blocked or "mercilessly" mocked, he wrote.

Zunger's post implies Google wants to borg the loved features of Google Reader and spread them across its platform. El Reg finds itself wondering whether Google Reader was killed because it wasn't very easy for Google or partners to display ads against.

Perhaps Google is planning to introduce a new service that behaves like Google Reader, but embedded in Google+ as a way to funnel users into the social network and serve them more ads?, we find ourselves thinking as we anxiously fold and re-fold our many tinfoil hats. ®