Interesting to read this breakdown of what was happening with Reader: I recall the discussions internally at Google and knew some folks floating around it (including at least one person who volunteered to take on maintenance) but this was largely new to me. Uncomfortably enough was on stage giving a talk for Google the day the shut down happened. I asked for questions, got a lot of hands, then qualified I was looking for questions about the talk and not Reader, and most of the hands went down.
https://blog.persistent.info/2013/06/google-reader-shutdown-tidbits.html?m=1