You're required to click something opting to share any feeds you're reading, and if you do, they're shared with everybody you know through google. This is not at all unreasonable, and it's ridiculously easy to remove things from your share and prevent anybody from ever seeing it. There was even a massive screen announcing the change when you logged in to the service when it was announced.
Tempest in a teapot, indeed. Lot less awful than the things Facebook has tried.
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