Google Reader

Cause of death

Killed by one executive

Made by

Google

Google retired it to concentrate on fewer products, over the objections of a small but intensely loyal userbase.

For eight years Google Reader was how a large share of the technical internet read the technical internet. Google's shutdown notice cited declining usage and a company-wide push toward fewer products, and gave users a three-month runway to export their subscriptions. The closure is still cited as the moment RSS stopped being a mainstream consumer technology, and a small industry of replacement readers exists because of it.