I don’t think RSS is a good example. Everyone I know who used google reader switched to a different RSS reader;
It’s mostly that RSS isn’t monetizable as easily as web pages. I think FB and Twitter dropping their feeds had a more significant effect; regardless, RSS was always niche.
If we’re going to go with anecdotes, I can counter with all of my friends (entirely non-technical) simply stopped consuming via RSS because there were no alternatives at that time that ticked all the boxes.
For me, the key is that Google Reader actually killed off competing products during its existence. Then when they killed of Google Reader, that stunted the ecosystem because anyone who wanted to provide an alternative was starting from the ground up. All the time that could have been spent driving RSS forward was instead spent on catchup.
FB and Twitter dropping their feeds may not have happened if the RSS ecosystem evolved to benefit them in some way.
Now occurs to me that one could clone any given Google service (product), ensure maximum compatibility, wait for Google to biff, and then welcome all the orphans.
Yeah, they all realized how much tracking and advert impressions you lose with RSS. It seems like that's happened with a lot of web technologies that aren't conducive to that since Google's taken the reins.
It’s mostly that RSS isn’t monetizable as easily as web pages. I think FB and Twitter dropping their feeds had a more significant effect; regardless, RSS was always niche.