Are you replying to me? That's exactly what I'm saying.
Google Reader was an irrelevant product to the general public, only adopted by a very small niche of users, just as Hacker News is largely irrelevant and unknown to the general public.
While CNN and Engadget had 24M and 7M RSS subscribers (which include Google Reader), the numbers drop quickly, with the 3rd one having 1.7M (NYT).
Also, apparently the Google Reader Android app had <5M downloads at time of shutdown.
Given that distribution and how fast it drops, I'd expect Reader to have had a couple million daily active users at time of shutdown, a tiny drop in the Internet & Google ocean.
And you can go around and ask people who don't work in tech: nobody will have heard of Google Reader.
Google Reader was an irrelevant product to the general public, only adopted by a very small niche of users, just as Hacker News is largely irrelevant and unknown to the general public.