Damn Google+ and it's 98% market share for providing automatic notifications when a site updates its content!

Wait, what?

I didn't say it was a suitable replacement. It's hardly an uncommon notion that they're trying to push people to Google+. Most of the behavioral defenses of killing Reader have to do with the fact that "social" won. (I disagree. Different use-cases)

Google doesn't want people to post stuff on their own websites. They want you to post it directly in Google+