Google search thrived from the third party websites. RSS incentivized and enabled those third-party websites. By killing the reader and RSS, they helped consolidate the web into unsearchable walled gardens like Facebook. If those decision makers still work in Google, that's a reason for continuing Google's downfall.
The decision was probably based on two reasons:
1. They wanted users to discover content using their algorithm as opposed to manual subscriptions to RSS thus depriving users of content Discovery agency.
The article suggest that it was neither. That rather it was an engineering decision: the product did not have staffing to be properly maintained, and rather than staff it up, it was easier to turn it down.
that's backwards - organisational/cultural/management decisions made it be under-staffed, which caused the code to rot, which led to the "oh, it's understaffed and the code rotted, let's just kill it".
I think there's very good reason to look past one blog post, people, come on.
If I am a higher-up executive in Google, I'm not going to much care what the numbers on RSS look like now, it takes less half a brain to understand that Google Reader has at least a CHANCE at chewing into the bottom line hard if it takes off -- even if those chances are slim. I'd kill it quickly as possible. If I can do so early, with little fanfare, even better.
They could be exploiting an undocumented/taboo feature of reality: simply telling people a good story can cause them to believe ("There is no reason at all to assume...") things that are not necessarily true.
The decision was probably based on two reasons:
1. They wanted users to discover content using their algorithm as opposed to manual subscriptions to RSS thus depriving users of content Discovery agency.
2. They wanted to promote Google