it is fear mongering because the entire point of the article is to point out another widget/tracker, when its absolutely nothing new. Event their +1 button probably does the same thing. So the author wants to obviously use googles name to get more page views when this is nothing new and has been done for years by facebook and twitter.

But that's not the point.

The point is claiming that Google took one existing open thing (RSS), killed it off, and replaced it with a Google-proprietary alternative. The spying agitating part is just side-complaining.

What are you talking about rss is not killed off, ask the feedly team rss is still alive and well. Point me to any site and I will show you their rss feed. The reality is most sites aggregate their content using twitter, rss, facebook.. so they are encouraging you to aggregate it in the same way. Really we have an issue with that.