On March 12th, Google announced that it had settled with state AGs for $7M over its Street View WiFi privacy case. On March 13th, Google announced that it was axing Reader. On March 14th, Felix Salmon suggested that the two might be linked. Now, we have further proof that he might have been correct: Liz Gannes of AllThingsD writes that her own sources say the same thing.
It turns out that as part of its settlement, Google agreed to closely monitor compliance of privacy issues within each product group. Because Reader had no product manager -- no one wanted to own it, apparently -- it was decided that rather than dedicate resources to it, they would simply kill it.
State Attorneys Generals -- regulators -- effectively killed off Reader. No one should be surprised if, in the future, other less-popular but useful services are also killed off, by request of Microsoft or its paid advocates.
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