A friend at HBS is going to be interning at Google this summer. We recently talked at length about an idea of his where Google should repackage some of its product line to make it more saleable for businesses—going into detail here is a story for another day. Though he and I agreed that Google stood to make a sizeable chunk of change on the proposition, I lobbied strongly that Google would never do it.

“It’s all about search and ads. That’s it. That’s all anything ever comes down to,” I pitched. My friend’s idea would monetize by selling products directly to businesses. Which seems simple enough. But, I explained, there are all sorts of logistics they’d need, too: You’d have to hire, train, and manage salespeople. You’d need effective customer service—an area which I think Google broadly ignores (perhaps they might simply argue “Just Google it”). You’d need to figure out how to identify leads. Etc., etc., etc. It’s true that Google is sitting atop a mountain of cash. But diversifying (even to a small degree) and not using its resources to feed #1? Out of the question.

So now I’m forced to eat my own medicine. Google recently announced they’d be shutting down Google Reader soon. In case you didn’t know me: Google Reader is in my Top 5 all-time favorite things on the internet. In case you didn’t know Google Reader: It’s an RSS aggregator, which in layman’s terms basically means it receives every update from all my other favorite sites on the internet, presents everything cleanly, and enables me to check one page (reader.google.com) instead of hundreds and without having to sift through a mountain of content which I’ve already seen or chosen to ignore.

I now think back to my argument from before. “It’s all about search and ads. That’s it.” I’ve met people from Google who explain that Google Chrome explicitly exists because of the incremental Google searches that result from using the Omnibar. Gmail exists because you search and view ads through the platform. YouTube, framed a little differently, is actually the internet’s second biggest search engine (after Google, of course). Google Glass exists because it opens up a treasure trove of new search opportunities.

I don’t think I ever actually search in Google Reader. And I’m not really ever served any ads. It seems like this’d be a tremendous opportunity for AdWords to reach me. I assume there’s a good reason why they don’t do this. Maybe it has something to do with advertising next to content that isn’t Google’s own. (What happens if Google runs an ad next to an ESPN article? Should ESPN get part of the revenues? What if ESPN finds the ad objectionable? Etc.)

As a result: Google Reader is dying. Thousands and thousands of loyalists like myself are left without any strong idea about how you’re supposed to browse the internet effectively without the use of a capable RSS aggregator.

Smells like a business opportunity…