Is Google Strangling Google Reader with Too Much Stuff?

Google Reader is still one of my main tools for keeping track of what’s going on in the world of mobile tech and just news in general. I probably have more than the average number of RSS feeds I check daily and the one of the beauties of Google Reader is that no matter what device I happen to be using it keeps what I’ve read, starred, shared, commented on, etc… across all the devices.

Google has been on a kick to add features to Google Reader lately and I’m beginning to believe that this feature creep is slowly strangling a good thing. It could be something else, but then who really knows. At first I thought it was the large number of feeds I pull in, but I’m seeing the same behavior with a different, smaller set of feeds as well. I see it across machines (an iMac, a Tablet PC running Windows 7, a Netbook running XP, and a Netbook running Windows 7) and with different browsers (IE, Firefox, Safari, Chrome).

Sometimes things will work just fine an as I expect them to, and sometimes it seems like GR will just hang while it is pulling in info. Again, I’m not sure why this is, but it is becoming a real PITA to use Google Reader on a daily basis of late.

Anyone else seeing this?