I am usually eager to embrace new updates, but when a vendor, whether a Web services provider, or a software developer, makes changes that mess with my data, it's not a good thing. This afternoon, it looks like the Google Reader team just made some updates, to enable more uniform reading of items, but with the addition came subtraction, as the update wiped out my historical data, showing which sites are most frequently updated and shared.
A very empty snapshot from Google Reader Trends this afternoon!
My Google Reader Trends page tends to be a wealth of information, acting as a blogosphere barometer for what sites are topical, and which offer new items rapidly.
Just last week, Robert Scoble posted a story on his "favorite 35 feeds for the past month", powered by Google Reader, but if he tried to do that test again, it's likely his data would be gone. I know mine is.
With Google owning more and more of my data, my present and my past, from my RSS feeds to my blog to my e-mail and news, the idea that the company could arbitrarily wipe out any part of my data without warning is very concerning. This is a nasty bug, Reader team.