Just because there will be replacements for most of Google Reader's functionality, that doesn't make sunsetting GR with 3 months notice any less of a dick move.
"There have been far too many HN articles on how evil Google is for canceling a free service, how this product cancellation is a symbol, how Google should never have given anything to anyone if they were going to cancel it later."
If a large company starts giving away a service that one would normally expect to pay for, and if it puts its marketing muscle into getting everyone to use the service instead of alternatives, it has responsibility towards those users for quite some time to come, having killed the market for others.
Now dozens of developers of RSS clients have to scramble to replace the GR backend that everyone is using. For example, Aaronbretthorst sent out an email today about the client he's working on:
"To be honest, I never intended to announce my project this week. I started working on Viafeeds on February 11th, and expected that I'd have at least six months to get it working and well-polished before Google shut down Reader. Unfortunately, things didn't work out the way I expected, and I've been forced to accelerate my timetable. This is due, in no small part, to the fact that I was an avid Reader user, and want to make sure that I have a product at least as good to use on my iPhone, iPad and desktop before it shuts down on July 1st."