Started using it 5 months ago for reading RSS feeds. Before Google Reader, I used various tools. I attempted snownews in the past (see item 3 below), and zort which worked pretty well most of the time. Yet, Google Reader’s UI is just better.

• You can easily add and discover feeds, often by simply typing in the website name
• You can more efficiently read items by clicking the Next and Previous buttons … no more brrrp-brrrp-brrrp mouse-wheeling around
• It really makes sense to have an RSS reader that’s capable of full browser-like functionality because so many posts contain images and video. Readers that don’t render each post as a web page are backwards.
• Since it’s a web app, you can catch up on your backlog anywhere
• It remembers old news items, so you can travel back in time.
• You can “star” items that you like

I realized there’s no way I can become familiar with good blogs if I don’t get repeated exposure to the quality ones. Waiting for a good article to show on Hacker News isn’t doing me enough good when I want more articles of a certain type. Seems more efficient to just follow the originators of good articles an information.