Bummer. I imagine there will be a few decent alternatives, but if the biggest game in RSS reader town is shutting down, how long will websites continue to provide and expose RSS feeds to the public?
None that I know of. But the question remains is whether websites will want to provide a syndication mechanism similar to RSS. Google apparently thinks that it isn't worth maintaining and they are just the ones aggregating the feeds. RSS feeds won't die and will definitely be used in various niches such as podcasting. But if RSS feeds are losing popularity as Google claims, I am worried about their future. Combined with the fact they are probably harder to monetize, I would not be surprised if their days are numbered on most common websites. And that sucks, cause RSS readers always felt like using a cheat code on the internet and I don't find anything that replaces it to my satisfaction.
Sample size of one, but Google Reader accounted for 6,168 of my 7,698 RSS subscribers yesterday (according to the probably-also-on-the-chopping-block FeedBurner).
