As a user of Google Reader, I'm kind of glad it's going away. Why? Because now good quality web-based RSS feed readers will finally arise. Sure, there are some out there now, but with Google's monopoly on the product nobody really cared about them and they weren't very good or reliable. Now that will be forced to change.
To me this is like if in 2002 Microsoft had decided to stop making Internet Explorer and force everyone to use a different browser - quality browsers would have been developed and adopted a lot faster.